MORE TALES BY POLISH AUTHORS

TALES BY POLISH AUTHORS.
Translated by Else Benecke.
Crown 8vo., cloth, 3s. 6d. net.

"This is a book to be bought and read; it cannot fail to be remembered.... The whole book is full of passionate genius.... It is delightfully translated."—The Contemporary Review.

OXFORD
B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD ST.

MORE TALES BY
POLISH AUTHORS

TRANSLATED BY

ELSE C. M. BENECKE

AND

MARIE BUSCH

OXFORD
B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET
1916

NOTE

The translators' thanks are due to MM. Szymański and Żeromski for allowing their stories to appear in English; and to Mr. Nevill Forbes, Reader in Russian in the University of Oxford, Mr. Retinger, and Mr. Stefan Wolff, for granting permission on behalf of the three other authors (or their representatives) whose works are included in this volume; also to Miss Repszówa for much valuable help.

CONTENTS

POLISH PRONUNCIATION

Pan = Mr.
Pani = Mrs.
Panna = Miss.

MACIEJ THE MAZUR

By ADAM SZYMANSKI

After leaving Yakutsk I settled in X——, a miserable little town farther up the Lena. The river is neither so cold nor so broad here, but wilder and gloomier. Although the district is some thousands of versts nearer the civilized world, it contains few colonies. The country is rocky and mountainous, and the taiga[1] spreads over it in all directions for hundreds and thousands of versts. It would certainly be difficult to find a wilder or gloomier landscape in any part of the world than the vast tract watered by the Lena in its upper course, almost as far as Yakutsk itself. Taiga, gloomy, wild, and inaccessible, taiga as dense as a wall, covers everything here—mountains, ravines, plains, and caverns. Only here and there a grey, rocky cliff, resembling the ruin of a huge monument, rises against this dark background; now and then a vulture circles majestically over the limitless wilderness, or its sole inhabitant, an angry bear, is heard growling.

The few settlements to be found nestle along the rocky banks of the Lena, which is the only highway in this as in all parts of the Yakutsk district. Continual intercourse with Nature in her wildest moods has made the people who live in these settlements so primitive that they are known to the ploughmen in the broad valleys along the Upper Lena, and to the Yakutsk shepherds, as "the Wolves."

The climate is very severe here, and, although the frosts are not as sharp and continuous as in Yakutsk, this country, on account of being the nearest to the Arctic regions, is exposed to the cruel Yakutsk north wind. This is so violent that it even sweeps across to the distant Ural Mountains.

At the influx of the great tributary of the Lena there is a large basin; it was formed by the common agency of the two rivers, and subsequently filled up with mud. This basin is surrounded on every side by fairly high mountains, at times undulating, at times steep. Its north-eastern outlet is enclosed by a very high and rocky range, through which both rivers have made deep ravines. X——, the capital of the district inhabited by the "Wolf-people," lies in this north-eastern corner of the basin, partly on a small low rock now separated from the main chain by the bed of the Lena, partly at the foot of the rock between the two rivers. The high range of mountains forming the opposite bank of the Lena rises into an enormous rocky promontory almost facing the town. Flat at the top and overgrown by a wood, the side towards the town stands up at a distance of several hundred feet as a perpendicular wall planed smooth with ice, thus narrowing the horizon still more. As though to increase the wildness of the scenery presented by the mountains and rocks surrounding the dark taiga, a fiendish kind of music is daily provided by the furious gales—chiefly north—which prevail here continually, and bring the early night frosts in summer, and ceaseless Yakutsk frosts and snowstorms in winter. The gale, caught by the hills and resounding from the rocks, repeats its varied echoes within the taiga, and fills the whole place with such howling and moaning that it would be easy for you to think you had come by mistake into the hunting-ground of wolves or bears.

It was somewhere about the middle of November, a month to Christmas. The gale was howling in a variety of voices, as usual, driving forward clouds of dry snow and whirling them round in its mad dance. No one would have turned a dog into the street. The "Wolf-people" hid themselves in their houses, drinking large quantities of hot tea in which they soaked barley or rye bread, while the real wolves provided the accompaniment to the truly wolfish howling of the gale. I waited for an hour to see if it would abate; however, as this was not the case, I set out from the house, though unwillingly.

I had promised Stanisław Światełki some days beforehand that I would go to him one day in the course of the week to write his home letters for him—"very important letters," as he said. It was now Saturday, so I could postpone it no longer. Stanisław was lame, and, on account of both his lameness and his calling, he rarely left the house. He came from the district of Cracow—from Wiślica, as far as I recollect—and prided himself on belonging to one of the oldest burgher families of the Old Town, a family which, as far as fathers' and grandfathers' memories could reach, had applied itself to the noble art of shoemaking. Stanisław, therefore, was also a shoemaker, the last in his family; for although the family did not become extinct in him, nevertheless, as he himself expressed it, "Divine Providence had ordained" that he should not hand down his trade to his son.

"God has brought him up, sir, and it seems to have been His will that the shoemaker Światełkis should come to an end in me," Stanisław used to say. He had a habit of talking quickly, as if he were rattling peas on to a wall. Only at very rare moments, when something gave him courage and no strangers were present, he would add: "Though His judgments are past finding out.... What does it matter? Why, my grandson will be a shoemaker!" He would then grow pale from having expressed his secret thought, turn round quickly, as though looking for something, shift uneasily, and—as I noticed sometimes—unconsciously spit and whisper to himself: "Not in an evil hour be it spoken, Lord!" thereby driving away the spell from his dearest wish.

He was of middle height, fair, but nearly grey, and had lost all his teeth. He wore a beard, and had a broad, shapeless nose and large, hollow eyes; it was difficult to say what kind of person he was as long as he sat silent. But only let him move—which, notwithstanding the inseparable stick, he always did hastily, not to say feverishly—only let him pour out his quick words with a tongue moving like a spinning-wheel, and no one who had ever seen a burgher of pure Polish blood could fail to recognize him as a chip of the old block. Stanisław had not long carried on his trade in X——. Having scraped together some money as foreman, he had started a small shop; but he was chiefly famous in the little town as the one maker of good Polish sausages. He had a house next door to the shop, consisting of one room and a tiny kitchen. He did not keep a servant; a big peasant, known as Maciej, prepared his meals and gave him companionship and efficient protection. Hitherto, however, I had known very little of this man.

I did not often visit Światełki, and as a rule only when I wanted to buy something. So we had chatted in the shop, and I had only seen Maciej in passing. But I had noticed him as something unusually large. He was, indeed, huge; not only tall, but, as rarely happens, broad in proportion. It was this which gave his whole figure its special characteristics, and made it seem imposing rather than tall.

A house calculated for ordinary people he found narrow. Furniture standing far enough apart to suit the average man hampered Maciej. He could not take two steps in the house without knocking against something. He trod cautiously and very slowly, continually looking round; and he always had the ashamed air of a man who feels himself out of place and is persuaded that his strongest efforts will not save him from doing absurd things. I had seen Maciej a few times when, in Światełki's absence, he had taken his place in the shop, where the accommodation was fairly limited. An expression almost of suffering was depicted on his broad face, and especially noticeable when, on approaching the passage between the shelves and the counter, he stood still a moment and measured the extent of the danger with an anxious look. That it existed was undoubted, for the shelves were full of glasses and jugs of all kinds, so that one push could do no little harm. It was a real Scylla and Charybdis for him. He looked indescribably comical, and was so much worried that after a few minutes the drops of perspiration ran off his forehead. Once I found him there in utter misery, waiting for someone to come. For he had fancied, when going through this passage after settling with a customer, that he had knocked against something behind him, and, not being able to ascertain what it was, he stood and waited, afraid to move until someone came.

"God be praised that you've come!" he exclaimed with delight. "I am fixed here as sure as a Jew comes to a wedding. He's gone away and doesn't mean to come back! Good Lord! how little room there is here! I've knocked against some teapot or other, and can't move either way. The devil take all these shelves!" He continued his lamentations when I had set him free. "It's always like this; it's a real misfortune, this want of room. But what does it matter to him? He fits in here; though he has to help himself with a stick, he can spin round like a top."

"He" was, of course, the shoemaker, for Maciej's stupidity caused frequent bickerings, which, however, never became serious between them. Maciej's unwieldiness and awkwardness irritated the nervous, agile shoemaker; while, on the other hand, Maciej could not understand the shoemaker's quickness. But this was not their only cause of contention. The shoemaker, a burgher, was to a certain extent a man of position, with a deep sense of his higher rank; he wore a coat, and had needs which Maciej regarded as entirely superfluous—in fact, those of a gentleman. In addition, the shoemaker was the owner of the house, and Maciej's employer.

Apart from all this, however, the antagonism revealed in their mutual relations was not deep-seated, but in reality superficial. The shoemaker grumbled at Maciej, and sometimes made fun of him; but he always did it as if he were on equal terms with him, observing the respect due to a peasant of some standing—that is, he always used the form "you," and not "thou," in addressing him. Maciej usually received the shoemaker's grumbling in silence, but sometimes answered his taunts pretty sharply. Besides their common fate and present equality in the eyes of the law, other weighty reasons had an influence in making bearable the relations between people of different classes in one small room.

In comparison with Maciej, the shoemaker possessed intelligence of which the latter could never even have dreamt. The shoemaker could read, and—what gave him a special charm, and no little authority in Maciej's eyes—he could scrawl the eighteen letters of his Christian and surname, although slowly, and always with considerable difficulty. To Maciej's credit, on the other hand, besides his physical strength—that brute force which impresses even those who are not lame—stood the fact that he took service more from motives of comradeship than of necessity. For he possessed capital of his own, having made several hundred roubles, which were deposited at present at the shoemaker's house. Moreover—the most important thing of all—he was a conscientious and honest man. When, before knowing this, I asked the shoemaker in conversation if he could trust Maciej completely, since he lived alone with him and often left him in the shop, he repeated my question with so much astonishment that I at once realized its thorough inappropriateness. He repeated it, and, not speaking quickly, as usual, but slowly and emphatically, he gave me this answer: "Maciej, sir, is a man—of gold."

Immediately on my arrival the shop was closed and we went into the house. A small table with a chair on either side stood under the only window of the little room. Close behind the chairs there was a bed along one wall, and a small wooden sofa along the other. A narrow opening opposite the table led to the kitchen where Maciej lived. We sat down to consult what to write. Not only the shoemaker, but even Maciej, was in an extremely serious mood; both evidently attached no little importance to the writing of letters. The shoemaker fetched from a trunk a large parcel tied up in a sheet of paper, and, having taken out the last letters from his wife and son, handed them carefully to me. Maciej squeezed himself into the kitchen, and did not return to us. A moment later, however, his head with the large red face—but his head only—showed like the moon against the dark background of the opening.

"Why do you go so far away, Maciej?" I asked.

"Eh, you see, sir, it's not comfortable sitting in there. I've knocked a bench together here that's a bit stronger."

The shoemaker mumbled something about breaking the chairs, but Maciej busied himself with his pipe and did not hear, or pretended not to hear.

We began to read the letters. The letter from his wife contained the usual account of daily worries, interspersed with wishes for his return and the hope of yet seeing him. The letter from his son, who had finished his apprenticeship as journeyman joiner half a year ago, was sufficiently frivolous. After telling his father that he was now free, he wrote that, as he could not always get work, he was unable to make the necessary amount of money to buy himself a watch, and he begged his father to send him thirteen roubles or more for this purpose. I finished reading this, and looked at the shoemaker, who was carefully watching the impression the letter was making on me. I tried to look quite indifferent; whether I succeeded to any extent I do not know, for I did not look straight at him. But I was convinced after a moment that my efforts had been vain, for I heard the anxious question: "Well, and what else, sir?" It was clear that his son's letter was very painful to him, even more so than I had supposed.

"Here am I, trying and working all I can, so that in case I return there may be something to live upon and I mayn't have to beg in my old age, and that fool——"

We both began to remonstrate with him that it was unnecessary to take this to heart, and that his son was probably—in fact, certainly—a very good lad, only perhaps a little spoilt, especially if he was the only child.

"Of course he is the only one, for I have never even seen him."

"How—never?"

"Yes, really never; because—I remember it as if it were to-day—it was five o'clock in the evening. I was doing something in the backyard, when my neighbour, Kwiatkowski, called out to me from behind the wooden fence: 'God help you, Stanisław, for they are coming after you!' I only had time to run up to the window and call out: 'Good-bye, Basia; remember St. Stanisław will be his patron!' That's all I said. Basia was confined shortly after, but I didn't see her again. So it was a good thing I said it, for now there'll always be something to remember me by."

"God be praised that it's so! but if it hadn't been a son——"

Maciej did not finish his sentence, however, for the offended shoemaker began to reprimand him sternly.

"You are talking nonsense, Maciej, and it is not for the first time! Does not the Church also give the name of St. Stanisława? Besides, though I am a sinner as every man is, couldn't I guess that a word spoken at a moment like that would carry weight with the Almighty? Isn't everything in God's hand?"

Maciej looked down, and a deep sigh was the only testimony to the shoemaker's eloquence.

Stanisław's explanation of the circumstances lightened our task very much, and when he had remembered that the mother never complained of her son—on the contrary, was always satisfied with him—we succeeded in calming his excessive anxiety concerning the fate of his only child. In order to settle the matter thoroughly, it was decided to ask some responsible and enlightened person to examine the lad as he should think fit and to keep an eye on him in future, reporting the result of the examination to the father. This was arranged because the mother, being a simple and uneducated woman, was thought to be possibly much too fond of her only son, and an over-indulgent and blind judge. The only question was the choice of the individual—a sufficiently difficult matter; this one had died, that one had grown rich, the other had lately taken to drink. We meditated long, and would have meditated still longer, if finally the shoemaker had not said firmly, with the air of a man persuaded that he is speaking to the point:

"We will write to the priest!" And when Maciej, glad that the troublesome deliberation was over—possibly, also, in order to regain his position after having just said a stupid thing—hastily supported this with, "Yes, the priest will be best," I conceded to the majority.

Certain difficulties arose from the fact that the priest was not personally known to Światełki, and that, as Maciej put it, "the priest couldn't be approached just anyhow." These difficulties were overcome by the business-like shoemaker, who began by ordering a solemn Requiem Mass for the souls of his parents, for which he sent the priest ten roubles, and in this way commended his son to the kind consideration of his benefactor.

I began to write the letters, of which there were to be three: to his wife, to his son, and to the priest. In the course of my stay in Siberia I had written so many similar letters that I had gained no little facility in this kind of composition. I therefore wrote quickly, only asking for a few particulars. The shoemaker crept from the bed, on which he had hitherto been sitting, to the chair standing by the table, and bending over this followed the movement of my pen attentively, ready to answer any questions. Maciej cleaned out his pipe in silence. I finished the letters, and proceeded to read them.

Stanisław sent his wife fifty roubles. As he retained a most affectionate remembrance of his faithful Basia, loved her possibly more now than twenty years ago, and could never speak of her without deep emotion, the letter to her corresponded to the feelings of his youth. He was paler than usual as he listened to it, and he tried to say something, but his lips trembled and the words caught in his throat. When the reading was finished, however, Stanisław wriggled in the way peculiar to him, and, after blowing his nose several times, finally articulated: "Now I will sign." Having discovered his spectacles in the table drawer and duly fixed them on his nose, the shoemaker pointed to the place where the signature was to be put, and began:

"Es, tee." He had already opened his mouth to pronounce the third letter, when the incautious Maciej, who had behaved most properly while I was writing, unexpectedly interrupted with:

"If you would also——"

He burst in with this, but of course did not finish. The shoemaker laid down the pen, lifted his head high, so as to look through his spectacles at Maciej—who without doubt was already regretting his ill-timed remark—and said drily:

"Maciej, you are hindering me."

Maciej grew very red, and, naturally, did not utter another word. The shoemaker finished writing his name without further interruption, and took out the money. In order to avoid mistakes, he at once enclosed it with the letter in an addressed envelope.

However much Stanisław had wished during our consultation to "pull the silly fellow's ears," the letter to his son was indulgent rather than stern. It was easy to guess what that yet unseen son, the one hope of the old burgher family, was to Światełki. He had worked perseveringly and honestly for so many years, and had overcome all kinds of difficulties; lonely and neglected, he had passed victoriously through the temptations to enrich himself easily with which Siberia beguiles the unsuspecting novice. Doubtless he owed all this in a certain degree to the honest principles he had brought from his home and country, as well as to his character, but, without any doubt, equally to that son in whose very birth he saw the Hand of God. It was clear that the poor fellow dreamt of standing before his beloved child as an ascetic dreams of appearing at the Judgment-Seat. The thought that he would be able to tell him—openly and fearlessly—"I have nothing to bring you, my son, but a name unstained by a past full of the gravest temptations," was the lodestar of his life. Taking this into consideration, therefore, I did not scold the "silly fool," but explained to him in an affectionate way what the money was the father was sending to the family—money he had earned by working extremely hard, and frequently by pinching himself. I told the lad what he ought to be and might become, being strong and healthy, and that on this account his wish for money to spend on trifles gave his father pain. I wrote large and distinctly, adapting myself to the young joiner's powers of comprehension, and at the end fervently blessed him in his new walk in life.

The reading of this letter was carried on with constant interruptions, as I stopped to ascertain if I had interpreted the father's feelings and wishes rightly. From the beginning I was sure that this was the case, and became all the more certain of it as I read on. Each time I looked at him inquiringly, Stanisław answered me hastily: "Yes, yes, yes, that's just as I wanted it!" But the farther I read the shorter and quicker became the "Yes, yes." In the middle of the letter, it is true, he opened his lips once more, but I only saw that they were moving, for they did not utter a sound. I looked up again: his chin was resting on the table, and the tears were flowing down his pale cheeks. He did not make the restless movements peculiar to him when his feelings overflowed. He did not scrape his throat or blow his nose. He merely rested his chin on the table, and, sitting near me by the candle, with its light falling upon him, he quietly cried before us. He did not quiver or sob, but the tears, which had certainly not flowed from those hollow eyes for a long time, streamed from them now. When he was calm he looked at me with his large, intelligent eyes, and thanked me without raising his head. "May the Lord repay you—may the Lord repay you!" But Maciej, having already expressed his satisfaction by ejaculations and indistinct mumbling, now took courage at a longer pause to make quite a speech.

"H'm—that's fine! I've listened to lots of letters, because in the gold-mines different people wrote letters for me and others. And even here, though Z—— no doubt writes very well, he writes so learnedly, like a printed book, that you don't understand a word when you listen to it. For he puts in so many words folks don't use, you can see in a moment that he comes from a Jewish or a big family, and that he has never had much to do with the people. Now, your letter goes straight to one's heart, for it's human. Oh, poor fellow! He'll cry like an old woman at a sermon when he reads it. If you would also—but I daren't ask"—and his voice sounded really very shy—"if you would write a short letter like that to my people too, oh how my old woman would cry,—she would cry!"

While I read the letter to the priest, Maciej kept quiet, listening and possibly also beginning to consider what I was to write to his wife, if I answered to the hopes he had placed in me. But when I came to the passage in which I asked the priest about the Mass for the shoemaker's dead parents, there was a violent crash in the entrance to the kitchen, and Maciej stood before us in all his impressiveness. His appearance was so unexpected, and made with so much noise, that we looked at him in astonishment. Maciej was strangely altered, and even seemed to me to be trembling all over. He came out in silence, and standing just in front of us, with his feet wide apart as usual, he began to search for his pocket; but whether it was difficult to find in the folds of his baggy trousers, or whether for some other reason, he was a long time about it. Having found it, he drew out a small purse, and, after a long process of untying, for which he also used his teeth, he took out a crumpled three-rouble note. He stood a while holding this. At last he laid it on the table with a shaking hand, and began in an imploring, broken voice:

"If that's so—when he says the Mass, let him pray for us unhappy folks too: write that, sir. Let him pray to Almighty God and to the Holy Virgin—if it's only to bring our bones back there—and perhaps—perhaps They'll have mercy."

"Perhaps They'll have mercy," the shoemaker repeated like an echo, as he stood beside Maciej.

They stood before me—these two old men grown grey in adversity—as small children stand before a stern father, feeling their helplessness; the lame shoemaker with the hollow eyes, leaning on his stick, and that huge peasant with his hands hanging down and head bowed humbly, imploring this in a quiet whisper.

We should certainly have sat there a long while in painful musing if it had not been for the shoemaker. Stanisław was the first to rouse himself from the lethargy into which we had fallen.

"What the devil are we doing! Maciej, bestir yourself! The sausages are burning in there, and the brandy is getting stale! Eh, Maciej, look sharp!"

Maciej crept to the kitchen, and returned to us—not, to say the truth, very quickly—preceded by the smell of well-fried sausages. We shook off our lethargy so slowly, however, that even the brisk shoemaker had to make an effort to put a good face on it. His first toast was, "The success of the letters." To this Maciej responded with "Amen," and a sigh which might have come from a pair of blacksmith's bellows. The vodka did its work, however. Our recent emotion strengthened its effect, and after two glasses even an observant person would never have guessed what we had thought and felt here a few moments earlier, but for the letters lying in Stanisław's trunk. The last vestiges of sadness were charmed away by the little song which Stanisław began to sing:

"The splinters fall in showers
Where woodmen trees are felling;
Oh, good and pretty children
Are dear beyond all telling!"

But in his present cheerful frame of mind Maciej protested energetically against even this slight echo of sadness.

"Eh! just you shut up about your children! I've five of them, and I don't care as much for them all together as you do for the one."

The shoemaker evidently acknowledged the justice of this bold remark, for he passed it over in silence, and only proposed to Maciej with a gesture to put on the samovar. Maciej did his work in the kitchen noisily and cheerily. He had completely forgotten about his favourite place, "the little bench a bit stronger," and he returned to us without delay. His voice, always absolutely unsuited to the acoustic properties of the room, now sounded as perhaps it once did in those years on the fields of Mazowsze. When he spoke, it was simply a shout, for he did not modify the intonation by any expression whatever. He talked about his work, gesticulated, and waved his arms; when obliged to stand up, he moved suddenly, and the same when he sat down; he became indignant, and retracted his words; he squeezed his fingers together and spread them out; but he did all this slowly and accurately, just in the way he spoke. He said not a single word nor related a single fact without supporting and illustrating it by expressive mimicry, by a movement or a pose, which he always tried to make as near the original as possible. So when I returned to his protests against the shoemaker's sadness, and asked him: "Have you five sons, Maciej?" he answered: "Five, like the five fingers on my hand"; and, holding up his fist, he carefully spread out his fingers one by one. He laughed long and heartily at this, in the way that only children laugh, his whole body shaking.

But it was not only his laugh that was childlike; Maciej's big broad face, portraying his inward calm, reminded me of the face of a little child whose thoughts have as yet not influenced its features. In proportion to his height and breadth Maciej's head seemed to me smaller than it really was. His wide neck diminished it still more. But when he sat down, resting his hands on his knees in his usual manner, somehow his head disappeared entirely, and then from behind he was very like a pointed hayrick, while from the side he reminded me of those clumsy but impressive figures which people of past ages cut out in rocks and stone.

The longer I looked at him, the stronger became my wish to know this huge fellow rather better, and to ascertain something more about him. I therefore decided to profit by the occasion, which possibly might not soon occur again, and to spend the whole evening with the shoemaker.

Maciej chattered tremendously; he talked bidden and unbidden, and was even more loquacious than I could have hoped. Although he talked disconnectedly, with continual long digressions from the subject, I listened to him with growing interest. His anecdotes were chiefly about his life in the gold-mines. However familiar that life was to me from a number of different stories, I listened to him patiently, for I was interested in the very ticklish question of how he could have saved together several hundred roubles in surroundings where riches can always be accumulated, but rarely in a legitimate manner.

"I worked—slaved—in the gold-mines," Maciej continued on his return from the kitchen. "At first they put me to work underground, but the inspector saw me, and called out, 'Who's that huge fellow?' as if he'd never seen a big man before, the low scoundrel! He was told: 'That's Maciej, one of the Poles.' 'He's a good-looking Pole. Bring him here.' They sent for me, and I came and took off my cap"—Maciej touched his head. "But I didn't bow. Oh no! why should I? 'What a blockhead! Where do you come from?' he asked. 'Ha-ha! and where am I likely to come from if not from Poland!' Afterwards he asked again: 'Can you bake bread?' 'Is he making a fool of me, or what does he mean?' I thought to myself, but I didn't let on, and said: 'That's a woman's work, not a man's'—so I explained to him; devil knows if he understood or not! But he ordered them to take me on as baker's assistant.

"There just was drunkenness and thieving and carrying on in the bakery! Good God! But I didn't interfere; I just did what they said, and they didn't tell me to superintend or look after things. When my mates saw that I obeyed them, and worked enough for two, and didn't meddle with anything, they began to carry on worse than ever. It was like a tavern for the drinking that went on. The inspector came one, two, three times: everyone in the bakery was drunk; I was the only one at work and kneading the loaves of bread. He looked and went away. He came again the next day, and there was quite a battle going on in the house; they were having a drunken fight. He ordered them to be put into prison, and he asked me again: 'Now you know how to make bread; you've learnt it, haven't you?' So I understood he wasn't joking, and laughed: 'Oh yes, I've learnt it,' I said.

"He put me to be head baker. They dealt out all the flour used in the bakery for the whole week—and there was a lot used, for we baked for more than two hundred people. So I did my work, and weighed the flour to make it last out. Scarcely was the week over, when the inspector came again: 'Well, Maciej,' he said, 'have you had enough flour?' I just said nothing, but took him to the bakery and showed him what was left—nearly three sacks. When he saw that he opened his eyes ever so wide. 'Good! good!' he said; and he called the storekeeper and told him to make a note of how much was left, and to save half of it and give me half as reward.

"Now, in these gold-mines it just happens one way or the other: sometimes such a lot of people come you don't know where to put them, and sometimes, when they start running away, there aren't enough left even to go underground. And that's how it was there: a lot of work, and too few people to do it. First they took one man away from me, and afterwards a second, and after a week still more, so that I was left with one, and then quite alone for a few days. I was standing at the kneading trough and oven from sunrise to sunrise. When the inspector saw that I was without help, and the sweat was running off my forehead, he called out: 'Vodka! Let Maciej have as much as he wants! Drink as much as you like,' he said. I didn't stint myself; but a single glass makes one bad enough, so half a bottle was saved every day. This was my own, and in this way I got nearly a rouble a day.[2]

"But whether by slaving like this, or what not, I don't know how it was: anyway I got ill. My feet and arms seemed paralyzed all at once; dark spots came on my body, and my teeth got all shaky, like keys in an organ. 'Take him off to the hospital,' they said. The doctor said it was scurvy. Whether or no, it was a fact I got worse and worse. At last one of the miners lying in the hospital, an old Brodiaga[3], said to me: 'Don't you pay any attention to them or to the doctor, for they'll cure you for the next world. Listen to good advice. Send someone to the taiga for toadstools, fill a bottle with them, and after it has been standing a certain time and has got strong, drink a wineglass of it with vodka every day.' I did just as he told me, and after a week I was quite fit again.

'Afterwards I saw the Brodiaga coming along. I thought: 'He'll expect to be treated.' So I stood treat for him. He said: 'Well, what did you think of it?'

"'I think it was a good trick, but I don't want to do it a second time.'

"'You're right,' he said. 'Have you ever seen the cook draw the veins out of the meat when he's getting the inspector's cutlets ready?'

"'Oh yes! Rather!' I said.

"'Now, you see, if you stop here, they'll draw all the veins and all the strength out of you. You've saved a little money; go away from here, and don't look back.'

"I left the hospital, and went to get my 'time.' But it was a difficult business. 'Stop here,' they said to me, 'stop here, and we'll raise your wages.' And so on. But I didn't agree. 'Your money is good, but dear,' I answered. The inspector got very angry, and shouted, 'Ass!' And they counted it out to me: I had got a round sum of a thousand roubles, all but a hundred and fifty."

"Did you really drink that stuff, Maciej?"

"A-ah! It was the first medicine I ever took," he answered.

But the shoemaker, understanding my incredulity, set it aside by an excellent explanation:

"No fear! Even two bottles of toadstools wouldn't hurt a machine like that!"

Maciej disapproved of the expression.

"Am I a machine now? Why, you only see half of what I was!"

"Then, you were stouter formerly?"

"Oh yes! I tell you, I wasn't like this. What do I look like now? A greyhound grown thin! Is this an arm?" And he untwisted his shirt sleeve and showed us an arm of which a leg might have been jealous. "Is this a leg?" Drawing his wide trousers tight, he looked piteously at his leg measuring over a yard round. "I usedn't to be like this," he ended with a sigh.

Nothing could have given me more satisfaction than these sighs. But a good beginning had been made, for Maciej, who certainly very rarely experienced the relief of unburdening himself, was so excited that he required no stronger incentive than that I should listen to him with unfeigned interest. It was enough to repeat, "What then? Just so! Really!" oftener and more pressingly. Thus spurred on, each time Maciej's "Ha, ha!" became louder and his face redder, and when the samovar had boiled he declined to obey the shoemaker and would not pour out the tea.

"Can I never have a talk? When do I ever get a chance of speaking to anyone? You're in the shop; you know what to do and how to talk to people, but I don't. It's not only with those who come here; I can't do it even with our own people, I'm such a plain man. It's dull to be alone, and I'm losing flesh; but there's no one I can go to, for people get bored with me. The master here understands every word I say, and isn't surprised and doesn't laugh at anything. I can talk to him like one of my own family, and feel lighter at heart at once. Do pour out for yourself. I don't want that stupid tea."

Although shocked at this distinct subversion of the order of society, the shoemaker allowed himself to be mollified, and began to pour out tea. Maciej, freed from one of his most trying duties, became all the livelier.

We both settled ourselves on the sofa. Maciej was to tell me his past history from the beginning. He was as red as a peony, but, strange to say, he sat silent, and although I prompted him several times with, "Well, and what next, Maciej?" he did not speak. Yet his deep breathing showed that this silence did not mean speechlessness. On the contrary, it was thought slowly working and stirring him to expression.

Maciej sat upright, with his knees wide apart and both hands resting on them. He sat thus for some minutes, with eyes which seemed fixed on the far distance; he sat motionless as though he were already away in that distant scene which, possibly, was opening before him. Yet, when observed closely, his face was burning. I was on the point of putting a more urgent question to him, when Maciej, looking neither at me nor at the shoemaker, began as follows:

"You must have heard of a large river—it's swift and black—they call it Narew? Not far from that river there are three big villages, called Mocarze.

"I've seen many, many different villages, and I've looked at many different people. I've seen the big Tartar villages, and the Russian settlements, as large as towns, and the villages on the River Angara and behind Lake Baikal, and where the Poles are so well off;[4] but nowhere, nowhere have I seen villages like our Mocarze.

"There isn't a thing you can't find there. Everything's there. My God!" And Maciej stretched out his arms.

"And those meadows and fields and the hay timee! Oh! those young oak-woods, and the corn, too, like gold!

"Here everything is big, but somehow it's dreary. What can you see in the taiga? What's there to enjoy in the fields? It's like a grave all round you: a vulture crying above, a bear growling in the taiga, and that's all the pleasure you get! At home it's different.

"There, if you go out in the morning through the fields with the dew on them, and shout, it sounds like a bell ringing in the open air. You watch the cheerfulness of the animals, and listen to the birds chirping on the ground and above, and you feel cheerful too. And if you breathe the air coming from those fields and meadows, as if it came from a censer in church, you feel its strength going into you. I've never felt so strong anywhere as at sunrise at Mocarze, when I used to say 'Good-morning!' to the sun. Here the morning's no morning—there's no pleasure in it; none of the birds or animals or people know anything about it. At home it's different.

"I've seen so many countries; I've been through all this big Siberia, and a good bit of the Lake Baikal country, but I've never seen a country like ours anywhere. But I've learnt that since being here. Yes, here! Am I the only one? We've clever people at home—priests and gentlemen and peasants with heads on their shoulders—but none of them know what they have!"

"Each of these villages called Mocarze has its own name. They call the one that's the oldest, Korzeniste; the second, Suche; and the third, which is the newest, Mokry. I am from Mocarze-Suche.

"It's a big village. Pan Olszeski was our master, and we were his serfs. Everyone knows it's not very pleasant to be that. When I was about twenty, Olszeski took me into his service at the house.

"He was a very quick-tempered man, yellow, dry, and small—the very devil, I can tell you! He wasn't really bad, only when he was angry; but he got angry about everything, and then he'd just be beside himself with rage—oh my goodness! Yet not for long. He'd shout and run up and down and get yellower still; but when he'd finished you could say anything to him, and, though he'd tremble, he'd listen and say nothing. He was just. It can't be said that the young men liked him, but the older ones—the farmers—always told us: 'Don't take any notice of his shouting; his bark is worse than his bite.' And they were right. He never harmed and never worried people; but this I only knew later. At the time I only knew that Olszeski was bad-tempered, and I feared him like fire, and—well, every bad thing. But I don't know how it came about; the farther I went from him, the more he came after me. He was always at me, scolding, cursing, and shouting. But I remembered what my father had said: 'Don't take any notice of his being angry, but remember that he's just'; so I stood it—stood it and never said a word. And I should have stood it longer if Olszeski hadn't gone too far. But he said everything he could think of against me, and at last, on purpose to wound my feelings, he began to call me a 'stupid great booby' and 'greenhorn.' Even now I don't like to think about it. He happened to come into the yard. Though I was at work, and he didn't see me, and I ran away from him like a hare from a dog, he at once began to shout: 'Eh, there! you stupid great booby, you greenhorn!' His voice was like himself, thin and shrill, and so penetrating it sounded like a whistle. When he called me all those names I boiled over with rage. It was only he who thought me stupid, not my own people. There wasn't a fellow in the village equal to me, either with the fiddle at the inn or at the hardest field work. For I never shirked work any more than play. And I was so strong—I'm speaking seriously—not as I am now; if there was ever anything anyone couldn't do, Maciej did it.

"And then to be insulted like that, and go on standing it—why should I? So I thought, 'There's been enough of this, and I've had enough of it, too! With God's help I'll show him I'm not so stupid, and not such a booby.' I don't know if I could do it now, but at that time there wasn't a team I couldn't have held. When I was holding them from behind, you could have beaten the horses to death, they wouldn't have stirred. I hadn't tried with the carriage horses; the coachman wouldn't allow it. 'You'll get the landau smashed, and I'm responsible,' he said. But I thought: 'Let come what may, I'll try.'

"It was a Sunday when he ordered the horses to be put to, but not to go to church, for he was driving alone, only to go to the town. He got in, sat down, shut the door, and waited. He liked the horses to start off at once at a sharp trot. But I was behind. I put my feet wide apart to stand firm. I took hold of the side of the landau with one hand, and of the back with the other. My heart was going like a mill, for I was thinking: 'Perhaps I shan't be able to hold horses in such good condition.' But you're all right after the start. I gathered all my strength together, and strained forward till my joints cracked. The horses started—they started once, twice, and—didn't move a step.

"'Go on!' a shrill voice called out from the landau, while the mistress and the young ladies stood at the window waving their handkerchiefs.

"'Go on, blockhead!' and his shrill voice went into a squeak.

"But the old coachman must have guessed what was happening, for, when he saw the horses didn't move, he didn't whip them, so that there shouldn't be an accident. He didn't slash at them, but turned to the master and said: 'How can I start while Maciej is holding on?' Olszeski jumped as if he'd been scalded, and trembled so much he couldn't get his breath. The carriage was half open, so he turned towards me, quite green with anger, and looked me straight in the face. But I held on, and when once I'd looked at him I didn't take my eyes off him; my veins swelled from holding on to the carriage, and the blood went to my head. What I was like I don't know, but my master looked and looked. I thought: 'God knows what he'll do to me.' But he must have understood, for he only laughed, and said: 'How strong you are! How strong you are! But now let go, Maciej.' I let go, and the horses started off; I thought they would bolt."

Maciej sat down tired, for he had been reproducing the whole scene of holding back the carriage as accurately as possible before us. He had stood leaning sideways, had held the carriage with his hand, been tugged at by the powerful horses, and had looked his master threateningly in the face; even his eyes had become bloodshot, and his tightly clenched hands had swelled.

If, wearing his clumsy "juntas,"[5] grey-headed, bent, and but half his weight, he looked splendid and threatening, if his eyes flashed now, what must he have been like when he faced his master in defence of his human dignity?

"From that time," Maciej continued, after a short pause, "my master was different. Not all at once, it's true; for at first he avoided me, and, though he left off scolding, he never said a word for a long time. I thought to myself: 'I'm in for something worse; he's surely thinking out something for me I shan't forget.' But no. He began to talk to me, but always good-naturedly and kindly, and a year hadn't passed before I was high in his favour. If anyone had to be sent out with money, or go with the mistress or young ladies, no one might do it but Maciej; and later, when he knew me, he didn't tell me: 'Don't get drunk, don't be too long, and don't kill the horses'; he only said I was to go, and everything he had ordered was as right as if it had been written in a book. So he got fond of me. I never heard a bad word from him all the last years I was in his house. And I was very happy. But though I was happy there, I had my future to think of, too. Though my father often talked of it, I myself certainly shouldn't have troubled to get married in a hurry, and didn't think much about it. For why think of anything better when you're happy? And no one runs away from happiness. There was work, but there was plenty of fun.

"What a happy time the harvest at home used to be! And when our Mocarze fiddler played at the inn on Sundays, even the old people couldn't keep their feet still.

"And our girls! Hah! There aren't such girls anywhere. For example, do you ever see one like them here? When they were all together, and you came up, they were like flowers—like the lilies themselves. And when you heard them tittering, 'Hi! hi! hi!' and saw their bright eyes behind their aprons, you didn't know yourself that you were calling out: 'Heh there! Go ahead, you fellows! Now then, fiddler, strike up something lively! Come along, my dear!'"

Maciej was about to start off dancing, for he burst out with the 'Heh there!' so energetically that it set our ears tingling. But a scornful remark of the shoemaker checked him.

"They hid behind their aprons? What vulgar foolishness!"

Maciej, who had already started up, sat down, but would not allow the shoemaker's words to pass.

"Vulgar? Everyone knows it's not like in a town. But don't be disagreeable. Now, among these girls the best-looking seemed to me——"

"Kaśka?" interposed the shoemaker.

"No, not Kaśka, but Marya. She was the best girl in Mocarze, and though she had no mother, and was alone at home, she was tidy and hard-working, and everything round her was clean.

"In the field she always went at the head of the mowers. She could always be seen when she was standing in the corn, it never hid her. My Marya was a fine girl, well grown, and red like a poppy or cherries in the sun. And her body was so healthy—it was as hard as a nut. When I wanted to pinch her——"

"Did you pinch her cheek?" the shoemaker interrupted impertinently.

"Don't talk bosh! Am I a gentleman, or do I come from a town, that I should pinch a girl's cheek, to say nothing of the girl being my Marya? I pinched where we are all used to pinching the girls——"

The shoemaker was triumphant and smiled ironically. Obviously this peasant did not know the most elementary rules of genteel behaviour.

"A girl like a turnip, I tell you," Maciej continued. "Strong as my fingers are—but no—nothing to be done—you couldn't pinch her, anyhow.

"I courted her, and it seemed to me that she wasn't against it; for she was always looking at me, and danced best with me. So I thought to myself: 'I'll just see how I stand in this.' So one Sunday evening I watched her going off to the dance, and she had to climb over the fence near the Wojciecks' cottage. I stood and waited there. I heard her coming; I heard, because one can always hear one's girl coming a long way off. She came to the fence, lifted her foot, jumped on to the other side, and was just going to hop down, when I, who was watching all this, couldn't stand it any longer; I ran up to the fence and put my arm round her waist. You know, sir, there's a song which ends:

"'Maiden, turn not from me....'

"Well, I sang the song as I held her, and wanted to kiss her. But I hadn't finished the last words before she gave me such a slap between the eyes that it quite blinded me, and before I could take it in—thwack! she went on my jaw, first one side and then another. 'So there's a kiss for you, that's your kiss, you fine fellow! You just keep away from me!' she shouted, and thwacked and thwacked like a tadpole in the water. My word! how she did go for me! I was so taken aback I couldn't come to myself; I could only feel my cheeks swelling from the blows, for she was such a strong girl. At last she stopped and sat down on the fence, and began to cry and say:

"'I never expected a disgrace like this from you, Maciej. Am I just anyone, and not a respectable farmer's daughter, that you should put yourself in my way when I was coming across the fence?'

"When she said this, I understood; still, I wasn't able to come to my senses all at once, and out it slipped: 'But why?' I said. It was just as if I'd covered her with hot coals!

"'Why? Why?' she cried. 'Are you a little boy? Aren't you a farm labourer? You're a clever fellow, to begin courting and not to know how to make up to a respectable girl! Well, if you're such a fool, I'll tell you: the way to do it is through one's parents!'

"Now, that went to my heart so much I was ready to cry like a calf. I asked: 'Will you have me?'

"'Are you cracked? Doesn't my father know you?' she said.

"'And you, Marya?' I said.

"'Well, why not—of course, if father tells me.'

"'Ah!' I thought to myself, 'a girl like that's a good one; I'm lucky if I get her!' And, if I hadn't been careful not to vex her again, I'd have taken her into my arms once more. But someone came along, and down she jumped and ran to the dance; and back home I came, for my cheeks were as swollen as the white loaves father sometimes brought back from the fair at Lomza. I didn't have any supper, I went straight to bed; but the next day I went to my parents and told them all about it, and asked them to arrange the match at once. They were surprised I was in such a hurry; but I was obstinate, and begged for it. The worst was to know how it would be about the master. But it was no use, I couldn't do it without him; so I went and asked him, and he was very kind to me. He set me free from his service, and gave me a field ready sown as a start, and a farm of twenty acres.

"We put in our banns, and had a wedding such as the oldest people in Mocarze didn't remember. For though my parents and her parents weren't so very rich, they were well-to-do farmers; and as to the drink, the master gave that. We did dance and all enjoy ourselves!"

Maciej stopped abruptly.

"Those seven years I lived with my wife were the only ones in which I have really lived," Maciej began again slowly and emphatically, as though weighing each word. "Marya was a wonderful girl, but she was a still better wife.

"A child was born almost every year about Christmas time. But she never had any trouble with it, for she could have nursed three at once. They were all boys, and they are all as like me as peas in a pod."

The sadness we could hear in Maciej's voice, and the way in which he paused, showed that the bright part of the story was now nearly ended.

"The home was clean and tidy, both the food and clothes," Maciej added in a measured tone. "And as to the farm, there's no need to speak of that, either. I was successful all round; I only wanted the moon!"

Maciej became silent, and somehow we felt that with his last words the golden thread of his life had snapped. We felt that as the story went on it would be different, and we longed for it to continue as it had been. Therefore, although knowing it to be vain, we deceived ourselves by the hope that we should still hear a merry laugh, and watch the continuance of that tranquil life, though, maybe, only for a moment longer. But, rocked by memories, Maciej let his head fall on his broad chest, and remained mournfully silent. Possibly he was chasing the last gleams of those brighter days which had disappeared without return, or possibly, as he looked, the days of fear and pain emerged from the twilight of the distant past.

The snowstorm was raging outside, and the wild howling of the wind could be heard distinctly now in the quiet of the little room. Suddenly it gave a louder moan, and shook the shutter as though trying to blow it off its hinges. Maciej must have heard this, for he raised his head, and, as if to put an end to his own thoughts, spoke at last.

"Perhaps everything might have been the same to-day, if it hadn't been for that misfortune.... If it hadn't been for that misfortune," he repeated slowly, as we both instinctively moved closer to him to comfort him.

"But directly the storm[6] broke out life became different in our village. All the strong young fellows went off, and I shouldn't have kept at home either, if the master hadn't said: 'No; what has to be done there can be done without you, and you can be useful here.' Well, he knew better than I did; so I stayed. Yet at first Marya and I both thought: 'Why is he keeping me here?' for I was sitting doing nothing for weeks. But suddenly one night, just before it got light, there was great excitement in the village. Some horsemen came riding up, people began to tear about, and there wasn't time to say two Paternosters before it was all round the village: 'They're coming! They're coming!' How the news spread so quickly, just like a cry, Lord only knows! But as it spread, every single living thing was on its feet at once, and rushing out into the road. Only a few had time to dress, and most people ran out as they were, in their shirts.

"Then the master sent for me. I was always at work from that time, and it was rare for me to spend a night at home. I knew all the country for ten miles round, so, if anything was wanted, it was I who had to go everywhere. With or without a letter, on horseback or on foot, I was on the trot for whole days and nights, taking and bringing messages, or acting as guide to someone. I could scarcely come home and sit down to supper before the master knocked at the window; I put a bit of bread and cheese in my coat pocket, and off I set. Marya cried to herself, and she very rarely missed going to Mass. But God took care of me. I didn't like riding, because horses easily came to grief under my weight; it was better for me to walk.

"So half a year passed. I remember coming back from my last journey. I had been crossing a bog in the wood that only anyone knowing the way could get through. But I came through it, and stayed at home a day—in fact, two—and they didn't send for me from the house. I waited a third, and nobody came.

"'What's the matter? Is he ill, or what's up?' I asked the household servants.

"'No,' they said, 'he's out walking and driving; but he isn't like himself, for he's even stopped shouting.' I asked again: 'Didn't he send for me?' 'No,' they said, 'he didn't send for you.' What had happened? I couldn't get clear about it. Marya was glad—like a silly woman. 'Ah!' she said, 'you've become such a gadabout, you don't like being at home now!' But when I said to her, 'Shut your mouth, Marya, or I'll shut it for you!' she saw there was no joking, and stopped talking. On the fourth day I couldn't stand it; I dressed and went to the master's house. In spite of having been allowed to go to the master's room at any time of day or night all that half-year, I went into the kitchen, and let him know that I had come.

"He called me in, and I went in and bowed, but he was a bit strange. He seemed cross, and was walking about, searching for something among his papers, and didn't look at me when he spoke to me. So far he had always looked straight at me when he said anything, and then I had understood. This time he didn't.

"'Well, well, Maciej,' he said, 'what have you to tell me?'

"I was very much surprised, for what should I have to tell him? But since he asked, I said: 'I've come to see if there are any messages to be taken, sir.'

"'Yes,' he answered the same way as before. 'I was just thinking of sending for you. There's a letter to be taken to Korzeniste.'

"He sat down, wrote it, and gave it to me.

"I wasn't pleased, for I knew there was nothing going on at Korzeniste; but, on the other hand, I thought it was stupid of me, for how should I know everything? So, though this didn't seem to me to be right, I felt cheered up. I took the message quickly, and came back and asked when he wanted me to come again.

"'Oh,' he said, 'there's sure to be nothing urgent now; and if there is, I'll send for you.'

"Again he didn't look at me as he said this, and seemed strange. That hurt me, for I knew that he was sending people on errands whom he never used to send. But I daren't speak; I went and waited.

"And I waited again for several days; no news of the master. I didn't leave my farm during that time, for truth's truth, and through my always being away there was a lot to do at home. I tidied up my clothes and went to see people.

"On Saturday evening I went to the inn. When I passed the Wojciecks' cottage where the fence is, some people were standing at the corner of the house. They didn't see me coming. I came near, and heard them talking quite loud. When I got nearer and they saw me, they looked at each other, and not another word was spoken. I said, 'Christ be blessed!' but only Jedrek mumbled, 'In Eternity!'[7] I thought they were perhaps talking about something among themselves, so I passed on.

"It was the same at the inn. There was a noise going on there, because it was the day before a festival, and, as is usual then, there were a lot of peasants sitting drinking vodka or beer. When I went in, they looked at me and there was silence in a moment, just as if the word had been given for it. I paid no attention, I came in, sat down, and ordered my glass; but I saw that people didn't talk to me as if I belonged to them. 'What's up? Good Lord! is it because I've worked for the master, or what?'

"But they've always known that; and they also know that, though I've served under the master, I was really working for another reason; they've known that a long time, and it's never been like this before. So it must be something else.

"I went home quite upset. When Marya looked at me, she saw in a moment that there was something wrong, and began at once, like a woman does: 'What's the matter, my dear? tell me what it is.' I saw she was thinking—Lord knows what; so I told her: 'People won't speak to me as they used to; why, I don't know.' And I told her about it. Then Marya clasped her hands, and said: 'I know whose fault it is: no one's but that scoundrel Mateus.' Now, Mateus was my elder brother, and though there's a proverb, 'The apple falls near the tree,' this time it wasn't true; for neither my parents nor grandparents were that sort, and he was nothing more nor less than a scoundrel. I asked: 'How is it his fault?' 'It's his fault,' Marya said. 'People speak badly of him; not to my face or to our family, but I and my father have heard them say: "They are always off in different directions." And others say: "Honour among thieves"; what Maciej hears at the house[8] Mateus sells to the German colonists or to the Jewish bailiff; and so on.' I didn't listen to any more; my hair stood on end.

"I asked: 'Why didn't you tell me this before?' and lifted up my hand to strike her. But Marya pulled me up.

"'Are you mad?' she said, 'shouting as if you were possessed! I wanted to speak to you before, but you always told me to shut my mouth. Have you forgotten?'

"I felt quite weak, and my feet trembled as if they were coming off. I couldn't stand.

"'But, good Lord!' I said, 'that can't be true! Even if it were, is one brother to answer for another, or a father for his son?' I couldn't sleep all night; all sorts of thoughts kept coming into my head. I made up my mind I would go to church next day. I prayed, but I could understand nothing. I didn't dare to go up to the house, but hoped God would help me.

"When I went to church I didn't stop or look at people. I prayed all through the Mass, and got calmer, and made up my mind to go to my brother and ask him what he was really doing. However, I noticed people looking at me when church was over, as they'd watch a wolf. As I went across the cemetery near a crowd of boys, I heard such bad things being said that again my feet trembled. 'Oh, my God, save me!' I thought, and daren't look up. I came home. My father was there. I told him all this: Mateus was disgracing us; should I go and speak to him?

"'You ought to have done it long ago,' my father said. 'But be careful, for devil knows what he'll do to you!'

"'He can't do worse than he's done,' I said, and went. I crossed myself with holy water. I really had to shout at Marya, for she clung to me like a tipsy man to a fence. 'Don't go, don't go! may the dogs eat him!' she said. 'If people don't know it already, they'll soon see that you've no dealings with him.' I went, and after saying, 'Christ be blessed!' I said at once:

"'I've business with you, Mateus; I want to talk to you.'

"'All right,' he said.

"'It's business I want to have a good talk to you about privately, and at once.'

"He looked confused, and plainly guessed what it was, for he said:

"'Let's go into the backyard.'

"'Certainly not into the backyard,' I said; 'there are people about there, looking. Let's go into the field.'

"When I said this to him he looked askance at me, and I'm sure he thought something bad was up, for he said:

"'All right, but sit down and wait a moment. I'm going into my neighbour's, and shall be back before long.'

"He really came back at once, and we went behind the stackyard into the field. There was a wood at the edge of the field. As we went through the stackyard, we found Walek standing behind the barn—he was a great friend of my brother's—a disagreeable fellow. When my brother saw him, he smiled to himself in a nasty way. A shudder went through me: 'It's plain that what people say is true,' I thought, and went along depressed, and didn't speak because Walek was with us.

"'Well, Maciej, say what you have to say,' Mateus said, and looked at me as if he were making fun of me and were quite sure of himself.

"That made me feel worse, and I went along with them sadder still. We came like that to the wood, and there my brother began to talk very fast. I remember every word.

"'Ah!' he said, 'you wanted to talk to me; but I see it's I who'll talk to you. Perhaps,' he said, 'it's as well you've come to me; just listen to good advice. It's plain you're not doing yourself much good with all this running about, for I hear you run round the master's house like a dog. Now, I can fix you up in a business which will bring you in more than two years' wages. The German colonist——'

"I didn't hear any more, and it's plain he didn't look at me when he said this; for if he'd looked, the idiot! he'd have run away. The blood rushed to my head, left it, and rushed back again. I roared like a wild beast, and sprang on them. I couldn't speak, but I had terrific strength. I twisted his hands together on to his back with my left hand, as if they were string, took him by the middle, and lifted him up. Walek's hand I squeezed so hard that the bones cracked, and he stood there as lifeless as a stone.

"I let him go, and took my knife, which I always carried in the leg of my boot, and handed it to Walek. 'Hit here!' I shouted, and held Mateus' left side towards him. He had to strike. The knife was sharp, and went in up to the handle. The blood poured out in a stream.

"They took me up the very next day.

"'Was it you?' they asked.

"'Yes.'

"'Why did you do it?' they asked. I told them. They didn't ask any more; I was condemned for life."

I looked at Maciej. He was as pale as a corpse, whiter than the white wall against which he was sitting. He did not move his hands, but his fingers twitched convulsively.

I felt sorry that I had induced him to live through that terrible scene once more, and looked into his eyes, reproaching myself. But as I looked I turned pale myself; his eyes were pure and bright as a spring of water, calm and innocent as the eyes of a child.

The northerly gale raged outside, whirling the snow round impetuously. I had a feeling of horror as I returned through the solitary miserable streets to my empty house on the bank of the Lena, The wild gusts of wind echoed from the taiga and the mountains surrounding it with dreadful groans, and I ran through the snowdrifts pursued by those groans.

But also indoors it was a terrible night for me. The gale howled round the walls with increasing fury, the taiga groaned more and more sadly. And when I sprang from my bed and wearily pressed my burning forehead to the frozen window-pane, listening to that wild voice unconsciously, I heard those groans issue from the taiga as if pursued by the fiercest gusts of the storm, and mingle in one imploring groan: "Oh, Most High, Most Holy, forgive!"

TWO PRAYERS

By ADAM SZYMAŃSKI
I.

Long ago, very long ago—or so it seems to me, for I see those days now as through a mist—for the first time in my life I heard a fine men's choir singing in unison in one of the largest churches of Podlasia. The church was filled to overflowing with a compact mass of human beings, who joined in the chants which streamed from the choir like burning lava. Loud at first, their voices passed into sobbing until they died into a low and yet lower groan, imploring and scarcely audible.

My small body shivered as with fever. I pressed my burning forehead to the cold floor and folded my hands, stretching them out to God and begging Him to quiet the sorrowful sounds which were tearing my childish heart; I prayed that those people in the choir might sing less sadly, and that they might feel brighter and happier. "Have mercy, have mercy, Lord," I repeated with so much faith and confidence that I held my breath and waited after each appeal for the sound of a voice like thunder, which would smother the prayers and painful groans, so that the joyful Christmas hymn or the triumphant Easter "Allelujah" might flow from the choir with healing balm upon the crowd of praying people. The last sobs were hushed; the last sighs of a thousand breasts fell with a deadened echo from the high vaulting on to the bowed heads praying below, and oppressed the suppliants with a sense of universal pain. Bent to the ground, they humiliated themselves almost to extinction. I was not conscious of those many bent heads, but only of their eyes, which, fixed on the figure of Christ, were addressing a last prayer to Him.

The faintest echo of prayers and sighs was lost in the deep vaulting; dead silence—an awful silence—reigned throughout the church; it seemed as if all the prayers of a thousand faithful worshippers had been brought before a void, were dissolving into nothingness, and perishing—unheard.

The awe of such a moment is terrifying, and the soothing strains of music alone make it endurable. Those tightened lips were silent, and the bruised hearts raised no sigh; but soft tones, resembling human voices, were floating above amid the vaulting, and descended faintly through the heavy atmosphere.

The lifeless organ had become animate under the touch of human fingers, and the crowd of worshippers, hearing their own supplications as if rising from a stronger heart than theirs, were soothed by the musician's skill. Imploring and praying with fresh confidence, they were strengthened by renewed faith, until at length tears came, and in those tears they found relief.

It seemed as if the choir had been waiting for this moment, for scarcely were the tears seen on the people's faces before it sent forth another moving entreaty, and all hearts burnt with fresh ardour.

Once again the people groaned and prostrated themselves, weighed down by the load of sighs drawn from their aching hearts.

I groaned with them. I prayed still more fervently, stretching out my hands more beseechingly to the stern God. I held my breath still longer, always expecting a visible miracle. But God was silent, and my childish hopes were shattered.

The choir led the people in a new and still more ardent prayer.

"O God, my God, when will this dreadful praying end?"

I felt my strength was failing me, and that to pray thus any longer would be impossible. I clung to my dear father, who was praying beside me, hoping he would soothe me, as was his way. But my father did not see me, although he bent down to me, for his eyes were full of tears, and I only heard his heated whisper:

"Pray, my child; pray, dear boy, and never forget this wonderful prayer!"

So I prayed once more, concentrating all my thoughts and feelings in this one prayer. The perspiration stood in large drops on my forehead; I held my breath still longer, and waited—waited in vain! God was silent. But the choir raised a fresh entreaty.

"O God, my God, why art Thou so long in hearing us?"

It was so hot and close; a terrible sensation came over me now. My head seemed on fire; the singing of the choir, the sound of the organ, the human groans and sighs, all mingled in a chaotic whirr in my ears. This whirr passed gradually into a measured peal, commencing slowly, becoming quicker later, at first near, then farther off, resembling the flapping of a large bird's wings. The grey smoke of the incense reddened before my eyes. It flashed into my weary mind that our prayers could not reach God. I looked up and flung myself into my father's arms. There, above—it seemed to me—like birds assembling for their autumn flight, but confined by the high vaulting of the church, the human prayers were circling and clamouring. Streaks of sunlight were penetrating the narrow church windows, and all the bitter human groans and pain and tears were beating their wings against them—pressing towards the sun.

"Father! father! let us go outside to pray—there, in the sunshine! God Almighty will hear us there, and nothing will hinder our prayers."

II.

The winter of 18— began unusually early in X——, as in all parts of the Yakutsk district. Already by the end of August the night frosts had shrivelled and blackened foliage of every kind, depriving it of its natural beauty. The broad stretch of valley in which the town lay now looked barer than usual; only miserable yurta were to be seen, no large buildings, nothing even distantly approaching the populous villages in Poland, which are so cheerful in autumn. During that early although short autumn I was attacked for the first time by home-sickness in all its dread severity.

Halfway through November the famous "sorokowiki"[9] began, which frequently last without interruption for two months. But the malady to which I had fallen a victim had developed rapidly and completely worn me out a long while before the "sorokowiki" came. Being a novice in such matters, I did a number of things which in themselves are not unwise, and are practised by experienced men, but only to a very limited extent. All who have suffered from nostalgia carefully avoid everything which may bring about a return of the malady; they talk unwillingly of their past, are obstinately silent when their native country is mentioned, and in public show a strange, incomprehensible indifference to all that should be dear to them. Of course, this indifference is assumed. At first I did not understand this strange fact. But later on, when I had been there longer, I realized that people who were seemingly hardened and indifferent were sheltering their suffering hearts beneath a breast-plate of despair, and that they were continuing their existence in the world by a great effort. I understood that this indifference is a form of heroism—an unassuming form, it is true, as heroism shown in misery always is, but heroism nevertheless.

People of all ranks and positions cover themselves here with this shield of indifference and assumed forgetfulness, some with more consciousness of what they are actually doing, and with more perseverance, others with less. But, among the seemingly indifferent, without question those most remarkable for strength of will are the peasants. It needs a long, long time before a spark can be kindled from the deep grief of a peasant; but when the fire has broken out it burns so fiercely that a man either hides from the glare or stares in dismay.

I had struggled with this severe illness for some months already and by the time Christmas Eve came I was straining after everything that recalled home, with the unhappy perversity with which a drunkard's thoughts run on spirits, or the thoughts of a lunatic on his mania. A letter received some days beforehand enclosing the symbol of Christmas, the wafer broken into small pieces,[10] had poured oil on the fire. I had read that letter through countless times, and as I now ran to and fro in my room, like a squirrel shut up in its round cage, I was no longer thinking of the letter alone. I had drunk all the poison of memories which the past sleepless nights had called forth in feverish haste without a moment's respite, and my harassed and exhausted imagination could go no farther. The day which had awakened so many remembrances and brought me so much suffering had come. My only desire was to spend the evening in such a way as to drain the cup of treacherous sweetness to the dregs, and surround myself with an atmosphere which would revive the irrevocable past—if but for a moment and but remotely—and would suggest new and actual pictures to nourish my exhausted imagination; although these might be of the coarsest, they would give it food for new visions, fresh hallucinations.

There were some hospitable Polish houses in X—— at the time, and Christmas was being celebrated in one or two of them. Yet I could not bring myself to go to any of them. It can easily be conjectured that on this day I wished to break away from the oppressive bonds of conventionality, and to spend Christmas Eve beyond the border-line of "society."

Imagine yourself walking in the evening, when there is a hard frost, through the empty streets of X——, and coming to the end of Cossack Street; you would then find yourself at a point whence the smaller part of the town stretches far away before you. The old mud-choked riverbed separates it just at that spot from the principal part. If the frost is very bitter, you will remain there with all the greater pleasure to enjoy the sight in front of you. A number of little lights, bright or pale, strong or flickering, are continually visible here, even through the mist of snow. In an uninhabited and desolate country the sight of any fair-sized colony is so attractive that I never once walked this way without feasting my eyes on so visible a proof of man's strength and vitality. I knew every house there: near at hand the brightly lighted houses of the richer tradesmen and officials; farther off the Cossacks' houses, like yurta; still farther the house of the shoemaker and church clerk, and Jan Piętrzak's forge; still farther, scarcely visible through the frozen panes, the feeble little lights from the Yakut yurta; and beyond them—the end of life, a boundless snowy space.

Oh, how cold it must be there! And how forsaken, how powerless a man feels amid those plains banked up with snow, glistening with ice, darkened by gloomy taiga, and exhaling cold, cold, and only cold!

Well do I remember how I trembled and my heart beat more quickly when I stopped on the hill, as usual, some weeks before Christmas, and noticed for the first time a very small fire shining through the foggy light from the desolate space which commenced beyond the Yakut yurta. It disappeared, and showed again. Good God! was it a phantom? I could not believe my own eyes, and rubbed them once or twice. But there, remote from human dwellings, this lonely fire flickered in the distance more and more distinctly. I stood for a long while before I guessed that this solitary firelight was shining from the horrible, execrated house, the house the inhabitants of the place avoided in fear. People had died from smallpox in it some years before, and to-day any of the local townsmen would sooner die than enter it. I could not guess in the least, therefore, who had dared to light a fire there at night. A Yakut was just passing me, so I stopped him, and, explaining what I wanted as well as I could, I asked if he knew how there came to be a fire in the old hospital. The Yakut listened attentively as long as he did not understand what I was asking. But as soon as he began to take it in he started back several steps, and when at last he thoroughly grasped it he tore off his cap, screamed out in an inhuman voice, "Kabýs abasà!"[11] and fled terrified.

The next day I learned that the plague-stricken house was permanently inhabited by some Poles, people without a roof to shelter them and with nothing to look forward to. From time to time people whose misfortunes deprived them of other shelter also took refuge there for a short time.

In this way a small colony had formed in the desert solitude beyond the town, whose members were of two sorts, permanent and temporary. During the last few weeks I had been a frequent guest in this lonely little colony, and now, after some deliberation, I decided to spend Christmas Eve there.

I set out about five o'clock, relying on the kindness—or unkindness—of the frost, which, if it had sent out its murderous "chijus," could have completely upset my plans by driving me to the nearest acquaintance's house. But, fortunately for me, although the frost was fiendish, it was as silent as the grave. The terrible "chijus" had not yet left its Polar hiding-place, and the air was absolutely still. Thanks to this circumstance, I reached the place unharmed.

The echo of my footsteps, with the creaking snow under my boots, played sharply and shrilly round the two unheated rooms through which I was obliged to pass in order to reach the inhabited part of the house. It seemed to be even colder here than out of doors. The windows were boarded up. But although in the impenetrable darkness I hit against fragments of pots and other useless lumber at every turn, and they tumbled about or broke with a crash, though the door grated on its rusty hinges, none of the people living there even looked out or paid any attention to it. At last I came into the inhabited part of the house.

It was not much lighter in the large room than in those through which I had just passed. A thin tallow candle on a shoemaker's low bench barely lighted one corner of the room. Two people were working at the bench.

The one sitting nearer me, a tall thin man, unmistakably a born shoemaker, was knocking wooden pegs into a sole with an expert and sure hand. He had not been long in the town, but he already had plenty of work, and would be certain not to remain long in this solitude.

The second, sitting farther off, a handsome man, was considerably shorter than Pan Józef. He was planing and polishing a heel, but slowly, without that deftness with which Pan Józef worked. One glance at the short shoemaker's face would have been enough to convince the most ardent opponent of all theories on heredity that this man had not always sat at a cobbler's bench.

As a matter of fact, Pan Jan Horodelski had once been a medical student; later ... but what he was later could not be told in two evenings. He had now been a shoemaker for five years, and, to speak the candid truth, a drunken shoemaker. His bad habit did not allow him even to think of carrying on business for himself; he therefore wandered round to all the local workshops, using other people's tools, and finding life very hard. Each master took a large percentage for the tools, and it is probable that Pan Józef charged him no less than other masters did.

His spirit had once been proud and audacious, but life had bruised it and trodden it into the dust. Some souls emerge thence not only beautiful and noble, but even strong. Horodelski had not that strength which braves all storms, and was now a permanent inhabitant of this solitude. His days were numbered; the intellect and knowledge he once possessed made him now fully conscious of his condition and filled up his cup of bitterness, the depth of which was known only to himself.

It was either the seal of death on his forehead, or possibly other and deeper reasons, which gave his face its particular expression. I said before that it was the face of a very handsome man, and I ought to add that it also expressed that gentleness and tenderness which belongs essentially to feminine beauty, and that it was stamped with indescribable sadness. He varied a good deal in his behaviour; his way of expressing himself and his manners frequently betrayed the influence of the surroundings in which he had been living for long past. Frequently—though not always—he could control himself, however, and then there appeared on his face a new sign of the manhood not yet completely crushed—namely, a blush of shame at his present position.

The shoemakers, as became busy men, did not even move on their stools when I entered. I therefore took off my things and brushed away the hoar-frost in silence, and it was only when I went up nearer to them that they both raised their bent heads, welcoming me with a friendly smile. As he was holding his pegs in his teeth, Pan Józef was able to offer me his hand, dropping it again immediately with a mechanical movement, and murmuring something indistinctly. Horodelski, after giving his greeting, looked at the heel, still unfinished, and, setting the boot on the ground, exclaimed with a sigh: "Well, that's finished!"

This was his favourite expression.

"What's finished?" I asked, however.

"Everything," came the equally stereotyped answer.

"Except the heel," Pan Józef muttered, taking the last peg from his teeth.

"It's possible the heel may get done too—that is, of course, if I don't leave this cursed ruin and go back to the church clerk," Horodelski answered quickly.

"Are you uncomfortable here, or what's up?" chaffed Pan Józef. "The Lord be praised, it's a good workshop, there are enough tools—and rooms, too; if you like, you can dance a quadrille."

But Horodelski did not listen, and continued:

"Yes, it may very possibly be that I shall give up shoemaking, if only for as long as I stay with the clerk. I shall leave it just because this shoemaker has made it as clear as day to me that I am no good at my trade, and can only be assistant to a bungling clerk."

Pan Józef tittered, highly pleased, and was just preparing to answer suitably, when a grave bass voice interrupted him.

"You may go to the clerk or not, but you'll never be a shoemaker."

The bass voice came from a dark corner of the same room. I therefore looked more attentively in that direction.

On a low plank bed, with his head bent forward, and emptying his pipe, sat a stalwart peasant, known as Bartek the Shepherd.

"Why not?" I asked, greeting the speaker.

"Why not?" Bartek answered. "Because no one can escape his destiny. A dog can't become a bitch, nor a woman a man."

"That is quite a different matter."

"So you'd think; but it's really all the same. Take me, for example. No one could say of me that I'm work-shy, yet nothing I have to do with ever comes off. And why?—Why? Because I'm not at my own work. So though I work and don't drink, I'm wasting like sheep in rough weather. I'm already more like a dog at a fair than a man,—only there's no fair. I saw that from the moment I came here. For isn't it a queer thing that a land like this, with rivers like the sea, mountains as big as the Łysia Góra at home, meadows with grass up to your middle, should have no sheep! Our shepherds are wise men; they can bewitch you and free you from spells, and have remedies for this and that; yet if you told them that in all this big country there are no sheep, they wouldn't believe you."

Bartek was a temporary inhabitant of this desert solitude. He was a very respectable man, but a kind of fatality hung over him; he was industrious and honest, yet he had never been able to find an occupation in which he could display his qualities and draw attention to himself. He had come here not long beforehand, attracted by the promises of some emigration agents. The promises had not been fulfilled, and Bartek, taking advantage in the meantime of this shelter, was only waiting for the frosts to abate a little before setting out on his return journey. He was a grave man—in fact, almost too serious. He did not care for idle talk, and rarely started a conversation; but when he did speak, it was always laconically and with decision, brooking no contradiction. As the representative of a class which for long ages had been fairly privileged, he was an ardent Conservative, and did not admit the desirability of social reform. "A dog is a dog, and a sheep is a sheep," was his maxim. He raised the authority of his moral leaders almost to a religious cult, and it was not always safe to express an opinion before him, which even remotely reflected on the authority he acknowledged.

"Who says so?" Bartek would ask threateningly on such occasions. And when he was not too much irritated, and able to control himself, he would shake his thick fist in the speaker's face, and solemnly announce:

"Only fools talk like that!"

In the other equally large room two more permanent inhabitants of this solitude were to be found: the locksmith, Porankiewicz, and the ex-landowner, once Pan Feliks Babiński.

If Horodelski was a man standing on the edge of a precipice, Porankiewicz had rolled to the very bottom long ago. When I went into the room, he was scraping together something near the little table which he called his bench. He was pale, thin, and very small, and appeared still smaller owing to his stoop; few quite old men would walk more bent.

"Do hold yourself straight just for once," I often used to say to him.

"Hah, hah, hah!" Porankiewicz would laugh good-naturedly; "only the ground, the ground, my dear sir, will straighten me. I have sat working from morning till night since I was ten years old, and even steel gets bent at last."

This man's life was a real Odyssey—only he, poor wretch! was no Odysseus. Ill-fortune had driven him through all parts of Siberia, and it was his lot to breathe his last in the worst of them.

Babiński was asleep when I went in, but our conversation woke him, and he got up. Tall and broad-shouldered, he had a strong physique, and his dark face with large projecting eyebrows and surrounded by a beard as black as coal, always had a stern expression. I never saw him moved to tears; when something touched him very deeply, he would only blink hard and stretch out his hand for the vodka. He was indefatigable and competent and knew how to work and had worked like an ox until two years previously, when he had begun to drink desperately. "He has either been 'overlooked' or he has a screw loose," Bartek used to say of him. So now he seemed to be lost irretrievably, although under favourable circumstances he might perhaps yet draw himself out of the abyss into which he had rolled; for he was a man of exceptionally strong character.

There are black cart-horses in Russia, called "bitiugs," which are bad-tempered, tall, and uncommonly strong. These animals walk with an even, measured step, and without the least effort. When you inquire what weight they are drawing, you will find that it is at least sixty poods, and they frequently draw a hundred.

Babiński was like a "bitiug"; he even walked with a "bitiug's" step. When he slouched along with his big strides, it was never possible to keep pace with him. He always did the shopping in the town—bread, meat, and vodka—for no one walked as quickly as he, and no one could stand frost, however severe, as he could.

He was a very hard man, and however much there might be weighing upon him, no one would have guessed it;—he was a real "bitiug." He also possessed a certain shrewdness, which often saved him from sinking altogether. It was he who had occupied this solitary house, and was the host de jure; but what was still more remarkable was that he had succeeded in finding a Yakut woman, as hideous as hell, who had consented to be cook in the colony, and was as honest as only savage people can be. Eudoxia was thus the sixth soul in this lonely place.

Not all the inhabitants agreed to the festive celebration of Christmas. Bartek, and, stranger still, Horodelski, were most strongly opposed to it. "No, never!" Horodelski persisted. "I will drink as much vodka as you like, and eat what you give me—but Christmas? No!" And he only gave way after Bartek's refractoriness also had been softened by unusual eloquence on Porankiewicz's part.

The usual order of these social gatherings was that first of all Babiński rushed off without delay for provisions, and quickly returned with flour, butter, "pępki,"[12] and a large bottle of wine. Having stilled our hunger a little, and refreshed ourselves by a good glass of wine, we went out into the front room in order not to hinder the preparations which Eudoxia was making under Porankiewicz's direction. He was immensely proud of the honour shown him, and threw his head back, as he always did when trying to hold himself straighter, assuming an air of extreme gravity. He was so deeply moved he was almost unable to speak, and instead of words gave indistinct grunts which, especially at first, nearly choked him. Ultimately the grunts ceased, and the sounds proceeding from the kitchen, of hissing butter, logs being split, and dough kneaded, told us that, having overcome his emotion, Porankiewicz was directing culinary affairs in his own way.

Things were now becoming noisier in the front room. Bartek and Horodelski, relaxing their restraint, were already growing boisterous. They began to recall and count up how many years it was since they had last kept Christmas Eve; and when Bartek remarked that it would be worth while "getting a little clean to sit down to such a great festivity," a public washing and changing began, as though everyone were preparing for a ball.

Pan Józef produced a very fetching collar, reaching halfway up his cheek, and ornamented his throat with a fascinating tie, made out of a checked handkerchief. Bartek pulled a small bag out of the cupboard, and, after rummaging in it for a long time, took out a threadbare piece of cheap ribbon, which he tried unsuccessfully to tie round his neck. His clumsy, unaccustomed hands quite refused to obey him, and the ribbon slipped through his fingers. But attracted by the sight of the shoemaker's tie, Bartek turned to him with the request: "Help me with this, will you?" The shoemaker set himself to the task, yet he either undertook it carelessly or murmured something about the shabbiness of the ribbon; for only when Bartek had said in a low voice, "But it comes from home," the shoemaker answered "A-ah!" in a different tone, and, leading Bartek to the light, arranged a tie for him with which "one might dare to go courting." Bartek walked about with this as if he had swallowed a poker. Then, when Babiński also pinned on a freshly starched collar, and Horodelski sported an antiquated jacket, on which he had been working for the last half-hour to get out the stains, the external appearance of our whole party harmonized with its inner sense of festivity.

Of the whole party, I repeat; for, when the door of the next room opened wide, Porankiewicz appeared dressed equally smartly in a long, threadbare coat, and although his collar was smaller, his tie was by no means inferior to the shoemaker's.

Porankiewicz cleared his throat once or twice—indeed, he cleared it a third time. Holding the door with one hand, and waving the other towards us, he said with a solemn bow:

"Dinner is ready!"

The sight which met us on entering was so unexpected that we stood thunderstruck.

By the inner wall of the room stood a fair-sized table, covered, as it should be, with a white cloth. The hay spread on the table[13] underneath the cloth was peeping through the holes. The table was lighted with two candles in very battered candlesticks. At one end stood a large dish heaped with temptingly smoking and savoury "oładis,"[14] at the other end a dish of pępki, prepared with vinegar and pepper. Round the dish lay bread, and a bottle of wine stood near it, surrounded by small drinking vessels of various kinds. But in the very centre of the table, on the only plate—once white, now yellow and chipped—lay the fragments of the wafer which had been sent to me from home.

No one had expected either the tablecloth, the hay, or the wafer; the impression produced by so many unexpected accessories was therefore very great.

Highly pleased with the effect, Porankiewicz now went to the table and carefully took up the plate with the wafer. Straightening himself until his back almost cracked, he cleared his throat, opened his mouth, and when everyone was on tiptoe of expectation, awaiting a speech, he said in a trembling voice:

"H'm-h'm! Gentlemen, the wafer comes straight from Warsaw!"

Chrysostom himself could not have spoken more powerfully.

We had been impatient to sit down to table beforehand, for the inviting smell of the oładis had begun to gain ascendancy over the solemnity of the moment. But these few words threw a dead silence round the room, and somehow we all involuntarily drew ourselves up into a row, and our five heads turned to the plate alone.

Porankiewicz straightened himself once more.

"H'm-h'm! Gentlemen, this is such a sacred——"

"Has it been blessed by the priest?" Bartek interrupted anxiously, full of joyful admiration.

"I should hope so! They would not otherwise have sent it," Porankiewicz answered, with deep conviction. "But," he continued, "h'm—I should like to say, as it is such a sacred thing, shall we not break it?"

"Let us break it! Of course we must break it!" came from five mouths as though from one.

Porankiewicz made a fresh effort to hold himself straighter.

"But since—that is—I should like to say—without offence to our dear Pan Babiński"—and he bowed to him respectfully—"we are all hosts of this palace, I therefore hope—that is, I think—it will be best if this gentleman, who is our guest, takes it round...."

As crimson and perspiring as after the hardest piece of work, he handed me the plate with a bow.

And now, when it was my own turn to speak, I understood the difficulty my predecessor had had in making his short speech. My hands trembled, and I could not utter a word. Babiński became as white as a sheet, and when I went up to him his stern face was as still as if it had been cut out of marble. Had it not been that his eyelids quivered, I might have thought that it was a corpse and not a living man before me. He was a long time in gathering the crumbs; they fell from his hands, and I doubt if he ate even one.

It was the same with all the rest.

Porankiewicz, being the softest-hearted, was the first to begin sobbing like a child; and although Bartek, who was standing beside him, kept nudging and touchingly entreating him to "be quiet, or he himself would bleat like a sheep," it was of no avail. By the time I came to Bartek, his strength was failing; he bent his grey head low, and, stretching out his hand for the wafer, he slowly began aloud: "In the Name of the Father ... and of the Son ... and of the Holy Ghost.... And of the Holy Ghost," he repeated lower, and burst out crying in a loud voice.

Tears brought relief to us all—to all but Babiński, who, instead of weeping with us, stood as though petrified, merely blinking his eyes. We could see that he was touched to the quick. For, standing near the table, he stretched out both hands among the cups and glasses standing round the wine-bottle, and clinked a glass loudly. His eyelids quivered and his hands trembled as in fever, refusing to obey him; and when Porankiewicz, who was calm again, ran up to him, he only whispered in a weak voice:

"Pour it out, brother."

Porankiewicz began to pour, and every hand was stretched out towards the table.

It was, of course, impossible for all to pour at once. But as we all found we needed something to drink, we reproached one another for not having thought of filling the glasses earlier. This, however, Bartek cut short by sagely observing that "nobody here was the Holy Ghost, and could know that so much sorrow would fall upon all of us." When at last all the cups and glasses had been filled, we emptied them in silence, fearing a fresh outburst of emotion, and proceeded in turn to the peppered and salted pępki course. This is food of the kind which cannot be eaten without being suitably moistened. So when Porankiewicz repeatedly took up the bottle, all hands were again stretched towards him. And then we noticed that Babiński's hand was not among the rest.

Babiński stood in the same attitude as before, with his empty glass, silent, immovable, and pale. Bartek, who had experience of sick people, was the first to perceive his danger, and, going up to him at once, examined him anxiously.

"It's clear it has got hold of him all at once," was his final verdict. "If it has no outlet, it may strangle him, just as a savage wolf kills a lamb. There's only one way to prevent it: if sorrow doesn't come out with tears through the eyes, you must let it flow down gently inside, and as it slowly runs off, the pressure leaves the heart. He ought to have drunk out three glasses at once. But it's not so bad yet; he's a strong man; he'll come to himself after a bit."

And, choosing the grandest cup, Bartek ordered: "Fill it, Porankiewicz!"

Porankiewicz filled it, and Babiński drained it mechanically; again he filled it, and again Babiński drained it. But the pain having evidently not abated, Bartek began to examine him afresh.

"Haven't you got some spirits somewhere, by chance?"

Babiński nodded in assent; and when the vodka had been brought, Bartek chose an ordinary glass from among the other drinking vessels, filled it well to the half, and offered it to Babiński.

The remedy worked wonders. Babiński sipped it, but when he had drained the glass the pallor left his face, and he sat down to the table and asked for something to eat. He was offered some pępki, and when we had all had visible proof that it was disappearing with due rapidity, a heavy weight fell from our minds. Bartek was now no less proud of his remedy than Porankiewicz of his Christmas Eve dinner, and each began to call the other to testify to his excellence. So when Babiński had consumed two pounds of pępki, and stopped eating, the first critical episode of the evening was safely over.

There was now a buzzing in the solitude, as of a swarm of bees; everyone talked, and, although it appeared to each that he spoke in his natural voice, there was enough noise for twelve.

We were all filled with the happiness for which we had yearned, and our hearts were so softened that recent troubles, long-forgotten pain, and wounds which each had concealed from the world more closely than even a miser conceals his chest filled with ducats were opened to receive the balm of comfort. Phantoms of manifold suffering passed before us in a long unending chain, showing us all forms of human misery, as though through a kaleidoscope.

Having now experienced the relief we longed for, and seeing the faces round us wet with tears of sympathy, we each spontaneously acknowledged our failings and sins, making our confession in public, as it were, and expressing sincere penitence for our misdeeds.

Bartek beat his breast, accusing himself of very great weakness; Porankiewicz sobbed, piteously begging to be pardoned for his bad habit on account of the difficulties he had gone through, which had been beyond his strength; the others also accused themselves.

Only after each had shown penitence and regret, and full pardon for the failings by which every one had been overcome on his thorny road had restored our lost dignity, the yellow, wrinkled faces brightened with sincere and childlike joy, and we dared to look up. Now we were all on an equality. The second episode, no less critical than the first, had passed safely.

It gave way to the third episode.

The harmony reigning amongst us, the happy feeling of mutual love, brotherhood, and sympathy, began to thrill us with delight, and foretold the longed-for moment.

Like birds flying to the fire on a dark night, the people inexperienced in the life here fling themselves upon that deadly hashish. But the experienced flee from the cup of sweetness which had so often ensnared and deluded us by its bewitching draught. They fly from it as from the phantom of death. That cup now stood unveiled before us. One after the other the coverings hiding the tempting poison had fallen away; there was nothing left but to approach and drink—to drink till strength was utterly exhausted.

The first to recall the delightful recollections of home was old Bartek, who unrolled on a golden background pictures of his native Sandomierz fields, pictures full of strength, simplicity, and charm. With dishevelled hair, with face aflame, and the inspired look of an old Biblical prophet, he showed us the most beautiful plains, meadows, and forests, of his native soil. He led us to hamlets with rustic thatched roofs; he grieved over the misery sheltering beneath them; he led us to the churches where the Name of God is hallowed.

And the longed-for miracle took place; the goal of hidden desires, dreamt of when watching through sleepless nights, was realized. Our distant country, our native air, the golden sun, were with us here in this dark room in the solitude. We saw that country, felt and touched it; we were here, yet living there; far away from it, we decked it with verdure, we adorned it with flowers, we decorated it with the most beautiful of decorations, with our hearts beating alone for our country—our bride to whom we would be faithful while strength lasted.

Is this no exertion? Indeed, may God preserve everyone from such an exertion! Strong men have tried to lift that stone of Sisyphus, and to-day their bones whiten the cemeteries. A few drunkards, tramping from tavern to tavern, a throng of madmen, breathing their last in hospitals, are testimonies to the fact that this stone shall not be lifted; for the higher a man is fool enough to lift it, with the greater force will it crush his frenzied head.

A frenzy had seized us all, and with bloodshot eyes, distended nostrils, and hearts ready to burst from our anguished breasts, we undertook this superhuman task.

Then woe to the bold man who would have dared to handle our illusions rudely! Woe to the unhappy one whose strength gave out too soon! Ere he could recollect himself, a knife, brandished by an otherwise friendly hand, would have flashed before his eyes. The unhappy man would have perished as the weaker wild animals perish without mercy among an enraged herd.

A choir composed of six voices resounded with a deep echo round the large rooms of the solitary house. Sad and joyful songs alternated naturally in the same unchangeable order in which everything is carried out in this world. A native of the Cracow district, Bartek with his Cracowiaks[15] was a host in himself. "We're not such bad fellows"[16] alone would have satisfied the most ardent vocal enthusiast, we sang it so many times. For it was not five or ten, but rather twenty years or even more, since many of us had heard that little song. So, although Bartek was already hoarse, to everyone's delight he sang it again for the fifth time, repeating the second verse, which is the more beautiful, six or seven times. Each word of that song, so charmingly and poetically naïve, called forth indescribable enthusiasm.

"Ay, ay, what a song! That is a song!" the brief applause burst out; and although Bartek sang on without interruption, glancing round triumphantly, he found time to answer each exclamation briefly but distinctly:

"That's a Cracowian song!"

Babiński followed the melody of each ballad or song, and rattled it out like a barrel organ, merely repeating two very discordant syllables innumerable times: "Dyna, dyna, dyna, dyna." He sang with the greatest enthusiasm, however; strong as he always was and burning with inward fire, he was terrible now with his wordless songs, into which he put all the sufferings and sorrows he had never expressed in words.

At last we had exhausted all the songs we knew, and sung them to the end; no one could recall any more. But since the frenzy which had seized us had now reached its height, it was necessary to find some new song giving ample outlet by its words and motifs to the emotions already aroused, and answering to our present state of feeling.

Among the songs of our nation which give an outlet to its longings, the greatest are the religious songs; for whether sad or joyous, mournful or festive, they are always noble in their deep and calm feeling. The people who can hear and find nothing in these songs are poor indeed. The Lenten, Easter, and Christmas songs are the greatest artistic inheritance handed down to us from the past. It is the one sphere of artistic creativeness not produced by separate epochs and classes, but to which the whole nation has contributed throughout the centuries of its existence, giving to it all its earthly joys and griefs—all its soul.

And therefore we possess a treasury of melodies which are as deep as the soul of the nation—indifferent to superficial or cheap sentiment—and as great as existence itself, obscured by the veil of ages.

Cast into this depth any amount of the blackest sorrow or the most exuberant joy, its surface will never even be ruffled. It replies to the greatest cataclysms with a ripple, and its smooth current scarcely even suggests any troubling of its waters.

From this treasury, as yet insufficiently prized, the great artists of the future will draw inspiration, as those in real suffering do to-day.

Who does not know the favourite carol, "Star of the Sea"? Yet it is probably sung in few churches as we sang it there. Both words and melody corresponded to our feelings. The simple words of the song might have been written for us; its solemn, grand melody soothed our hearts, which were suffering so terribly from self-inflicted wounds. Bartek was the first to fall on his knees. The rest of us followed his example, and earnest, ardent prayers flowed from our lips. But when we came to the words, "Turn from us hunger and grievous plague, protect us from bloodshed and war," we prayed with so much fervour that hearing we did not hear, and seeing we did not see Bartek rise weeping. "Oh, the merciful Father won't hear such a great prayer from this den of infection! We must pray to the God of the heavens in the open!" he cried, and went out of the room dressed as he was.

But our strength was now nearly exhausted. Even Babiński stopped singing now and then, showing only by his open mouth and hand beating time that he was still singing on in his heart. Suddenly, electrifying us afresh, a strong voice sounded outside the door: "God is born, power trembles"; and Bartek, led in by Eudoxia from the "open," in which he would infallibly have been frozen, started the carol in his bass voice.

Another spring, not struck as yet, gushed out before us. Was it possible we could have forgotten this? So, although our lips could scarcely move, we drank eagerly from this fresh source, and our choir sang a fresh song in unison with strength refreshed. The joyful song of the Birth of our Lord bore us far away again from the Yakut country, and kindled our hearts with new fire, the fire of truth, confidence, and hope.

We prayed long and fervently. Even Eudoxia, attracted by our praying, came in carrying a holy eikon, and bowing before it, repeated imploringly:

"Tangara! Aj, Tangara! Aj, Tangara, urùj!"[17]

THE TRIAL

By WŁADYSŁAW REYMONT

The door opened suddenly with a bang, letting the wind into the room, and a silent, sinister crowd of peasants began to pour in from the dark hall. They did not even say, "The Lord be praised!"[18]

The miller dropped his spoon on the table, and looked round in astonishment from one to the other. Then he turned down the lamp which was flaring from the draught.

"There are rather a lot of you," he muttered.

"There are more waiting outside," Jędrzej, one of the peasants, said, coming forward quickly.

"Have you any business to settle with me?"

"We didn't come here just for a talk," someone said, shutting the door.

"Then sit down; I shall have finished supper in a minute."

"To your good health! We will wait a while...."

The miller began to sip up his porridge hastily. The peasants meanwhile settled themselves on the benches round the stove, warming their backs and carefully watching Jędrzej, who had sat down by the table and was leaning his elbows on it in deep reflection.

"Beastly weather this!" the miller accosted them.

"Real March weather."

"It's always like this before the spring."

Here the conversation broke off again, and the only thing to be heard in the silence of the room was the miller's spoon scraping along the earthenware bowl. But outside someone was stamping the mud off his boots, while at times the howling gusts of wind struck the walls till they creaked, and the rain beat against the steamed window-panes.

"Jadwiś!" called the miller, wiping his short moustache with his hand.

A strong and very good-looking girl, not wearing a peasant's dress, appeared from a side room. She threw a keen glance at the peasants, and, taking the bowl in her arm, went out again with a rolling gait.

"What is this business?" began the miller, taking snuff.

Not a hand was stretched out towards the snuff; the peasants' faces had suddenly clouded. Someone cleared his throat, others scratched their heads in indecision, and they all looked at Jędrzej, who, straightening himself and fixing his light, searching eyes on the miller, said slowly:

"We have come to make you tell us who the thieves were."

The miller started back, stared, spread out his arms, and stuttered: "In the Name of the Father and the Son! How should I know that?..."

"We think you are the man to know," Jędrzej said in a lower voice, standing up. The other peasants also got up, and planted themselves round the miller in a circle, like a thick wall, fixing him with eyes as keen as a hawk's, so that the blood mounted to his face. "We have come to you for the truth," Jędrzej whispered impressively.

"And you must tell us—you've got to!" the rest echoed in low, stern voices.

"What truth? Are you mad? How am I to know? Am I a party to thieves? Or what?..." He spoke quickly, turning the light up and down with trembling hands.

"We know very well that you're honest; but you know who the thieves are. So come, how was it? They stole your horses in the autumn, but you did nothing; and not long ago they stole money from you—you even caught them in your bedroom—and again you did nothing and didn't have them taken up, and never even told the policeman about them."

"Why should I? Do you want me to lose more money? What good would the Court or the police do? They'd catch the wind in the field and bring it bound to me! May God repay those scoundrels at the Judgment Day for the wrong they have done me!"

"It's plain, from all you say, that you're afraid to let out who they are."

"If I knew, do you think I'd be the worse off through them, and not tell? Was it for nothing...."

"You keep going round in a circle," Jędrzej interrupted him roughly. "We didn't come here to quarrel with you, but to get at the truth; and we're in a hurry, for the whole village is waiting, some outside your house and some in the cottages. So we ask you as a friend to tell us who stole your money."

"If I had known it myself, the Court and all the village would have known by now," the miller excused himself anxiously, looking in alarm at the set, suspicious faces round him. But Jędrzej threw himself forward impatiently, and his eyes shone with anger. Without thinking what he was doing, he took the miller by the shoulder, and said abruptly in a firm voice:

"What you are saying isn't true! But if you will swear to it in church, we will trust you and leave you in peace."

The miller sat down and began to talk with feigned amusement:

"Ha, ha! You're in a larky mood, I see, as if it were Carnival. Of course, if you all go in a crowd to a fellow and threaten him with sticks, he'll be ready to swear to anything you like. I tell you the truth: I know nothing about this, and I know nothing about the thieves. You can believe me if you like; if not, then don't. But you won't force me to swear to it, for you have no right to try me...."

He stood up, rolling his eyes defiantly.

"Indeed, that's what we came for—and to carry out the sentence justly," Jędrzej said so firmly that the miller started back in terror, and was unable to get out a word.

The peasants surrounded him in gloomy silence, fixing their burning eyes on him, and shuffling their feet impatiently. So menacing and full of stern resolution did they look that he was at a loss to know what to do, and merely stood wiping the perspiration from his bald head and casting frightened glances round the circle of stubborn, set faces. He realized that this was not only idle talk, but the beginning of something terrible. He sat down again on a bench, and took pinch after pinch of snuff to help himself to arrive at some decision. Then Jędrzej went up to him, and said solemnly:

"You neither want to tell the truth nor to swear to it. So it's plain you are a party to those thieves!"

The miller sprang up as hastily as if something close beside him had been struck by lightning, upsetting the bench as he did so.

"Jesus! Mary! have I to do with thieves? You say this to me?"

"I say it and repeat it!"

"And we repeat it too!" they all shouted together, shaking their fists at him. Their heads were bent forward; their glances were like vultures' beaks, ready to tear.

Attracted by the noise, Jadwiś burst into the room and stood petrified.

"What's up here?" she asked anxiously.

The peasants dropped their clenched hands, and began to clear their throats.

"We don't want women here, listening and blabbing it all out afterwards," someone said angrily.

"She'd better go back where she came from."

"Look after the geese, and don't come poking your nose into men's business!" they shouted still louder. Jadwiś ran out of the room in a furious temper, slamming the door after her.

Again Jędrzej stretched his hand forward, and said:

"I tell you, miller, the time for trial and punishment has come!"

"And for bringing order into the world!..."

"And for weeding out wrong and planting justice!..." The words rang out menacingly, and again the peasants shook their clenched fists in the miller's frightened face.

"Good God! what do you fellows want? What am I guilty of?" he gasped, terrified, looking round from side to side. But, without heeding him, Jędrzej began to speak quickly and in a low, hard voice which penetrated the miller like frost.

"As he won't confess, he is guilty. Take him, and we will try him at the church.... Everyone who wrongs the people will be brought to a just trial, and be heavily sentenced. Take him, you fellows!"

"Jesus! Mary! Men!..." the miller stammered in deadly fear, looking round distractedly, for the peasants all advanced towards him together. "Men!... How can I tell you?... I have sworn to it. They'll burn the house down or kill me if I say who they are.... Merciful Jesu! Let me be! I'll tell you everything! I'll tell you!" His voice quavered, for several hands had already seized him and were dragging him towards the door.

It was some time before he was able to speak. He fell panting on the table. They stood round him, and someone gave him a little water to drink, while others said in a friendly way:

"Don't be afraid; no one who is on the side of the people will have a hair on his head touched."

"Only confess the whole truth."

"We know you're an honest man, and will tell us the scoundrels' names."

The miller writhed inwardly, like an eel when it is trodden upon; he went hot and cold, and became alternately pale and red. Suddenly he drew himself up, ready for anything. But before he began to speak he glanced into the next room.

There was a glimpse of Jadwiś, as though she were just jumping away from behind the door. He looked out of the window, and then, standing up before the group of peasants, he crossed himself and said:

"I am telling you the truth as though I were at Confession; it was the two Gajdas and the Starszy."[19]

There was silence. The men stood petrified and stared at one another, panting and drawing long, hoarse breaths. Jędrzej was the first to speak:

"That's what we were thinking, but we couldn't be sure. Now we know what we want to know. We know them, the filthy scoundrels!" He banged his fist on the table. "They are weeds that must be torn up by the roots so that they mayn't spread. Both the Gajdas—father and son? And the Starszy is the third? Then, in God's Name, we'll go to them, and you'll go with us, miller, so that you may tell them the truth to their face."

"I'll go and tell them—that I will! It's as if a weight had fallen from my shoulders. I'll stand up and tell them they're robbers and thieves. Good God! I knew what they were up to, but I daren't breathe a word about it. May they be broken upon the wheel for my sin in being such a coward! I was ashamed to look people in the face when everyone was calling out about those robberies.... The rascals! they took away my horses; I sent them the ransom through the Starszy, but they didn't give them back.... And afterwards I caught them in my bedroom: they fleeced me of every penny, and they threatened me with their knives.... As if that weren't enough, I had to swear I'd not let out who'd done it!"

"The whole neighbourhood has suffered through them."

"They have stolen a great many horses and cows from people, and a lot of money."

"It was easy for them to do all that, for the Starszy gave them the go-by, and went shares with them...."

"They had a gay time at our expense; let them pay for it now...."

"If everyone talks, I'll have my say, too," someone exclaimed. "I know that the Gajdas betrayed the priest for having married the young couple from Podlasia."[20]

"What!... They even betrayed the priest?"

"And the postmaster's daughters who taught the children[21]—it must have been they who betrayed them?"

"So it was! So it was! We know that!" the miller asserted rancorously.

"Then it's they who robbed and killed the Jews in the forest!"

"Sure enough, it's the Gajdas! It's they!... The carrion!... The mean wretches! The scoundrels!" The peasants began to curse, thumping their sticks on the ground and stamping. Their eyes shot fire, and they raised their clenched fists.

"Let's have done with them! Punish those swine! Try them! Try them!"

"Then let's go quickly before they escape us!" Jędrzej cried.

"Skin them!... Batter them to death like mad dogs!" they shouted, pressing through the doorway. The miller blew out the light and went with them.

They were no sooner outside the house than Jadwiś ran out. She glided stealthily along the wall, looking anxiously after them and wondering wherever they could be going on a night like that, and what their reason for going could be.

For it was a real March night, cold, wet, and windy. The whole world was wrapped in thick darkness. The sleet lashed the men's faces and took away their breath, and the damp cold penetrated them to the marrow; the wind swept through the orchards from all sides; the snowy ridges of the fields alone showed white in the blackness. But, without noticing the wretched weather, the peasants walked along briskly, spurting the mud from under their feet. They went stealthily one after the other past the low cottages which sat along the highroad like tired old market women taking a rest, or nestled in their orchards so that only the snowy roofs, resembling white hoods, could be seen through the swaying trees.

Jędrzej walked in front. Every now and then he gave orders in a low voice, and someone left the line, ran up to a window, and, hammering at it with his fist, cried:

"Come out! It's time!"

The light in the cottage would be extinguished at once, and the door would creak. Black shadows, feeling their way with sticks, would creep out and join the crowd in silence.

They now walked still closer together and with even greater caution, looking carefully in all directions.

Suddenly Jędrzej looked back nervously; he had distinctly heard the mud splash as if someone were running after them, and there was a shadow creeping along stealthily under the hedge. But directly the peasants stopped all was quiet and there was nothing to be seen; the only sounds were the roar of the wind, and now and again the dogs barking furiously in their kennels.

They moved on more slowly, but several now began to cross themselves in terror; some sighed, while others felt a cold shudder go through them. Yet no one said a word or hesitated; they went forward with a steady movement like an oncoming, threatening cloud drawing together slowly and silently before it suddenly flashes with lightning and scatters hail on the ground.

They passed the public-house, which was brilliantly lighted; some of them sniffed in the familiar smell, and would have liked to have gone inside to have a drink. This, however, Jędrzej would not allow. He made them draw up into the middle of the road, for they had now nearly reached the policeman's house; its white walls shone in the distance. The lively strains of a concertina came through the brightly lighted windows.

The peasants stopped opposite the house, and scarcely dared to breathe.

"Now keep a good look-out," Jędrzej said, "and the minute the bell rings, go into the room all together and get him by the head, and a rope round him. But be careful he doesn't give you the slip, or else he'll do a lot of harm.... Don't make a noise and scare him away."

Several peasants silently left the crowd and crept up to the house in the darkness. In the meantime the others marched on quickly towards the large square at the end of the village, where only a few little lights were shining. The space between these last houses and the snowy fields was filled by the church and a thicket of trees which looked like a black mountain rocking slightly in the breeze.

The Gajdas' house stood near the church, a little way from the road, and was partly hidden by a large orchard, so that the lights from the windows showed through the close branches like wolves' eyes. The men turned towards it at once, but in places the mud was knee-deep, for the puddles had become like pools, and frozen snow-drifts blocked the road. They went carefully step by step to avoid the obstructions, and made a circle as though intentionally prolonging the way. Near the fence they halted for an instant; Jędrzej bade them keep silence, stole to the side of the window, and peeped in.

The room was large; the whitewashed walls were hung with pictures, and lighted by a lamp suspended from the ceiling. Several people were sitting at the table under the lamp, having supper, and talking together in low voices. The bright fire crackling on the hearth threw red gleams over one side of the room. A girl was walking up and down, nursing a screaming baby.

"They're at home—they're in there!" Jędrzej whispered, turning to the crowd. He was trembling all over, and almost unable to breathe or to speak and tell half the men to go and watch the house from the backyard and fields.

But, quickly composing himself, he led the rest boldly through the gate up to the house. They had already reached it, when the dogs began to howl so dismally somewhere in the backyard that they hesitated for a moment.

"That's our lot has come upon the dogs. Come on! If they put up a fight in there, knock them down with your sticks, the swine!—No pity!" Jędrzej whispered. Dragging the miller after him and crossing himself, he walked sharply into the hall, the other peasants close behind him, shoulder to shoulder. They entered the room in a body, looking black and determined.

There was some commotion. The Gajdas jumped up from the table, their mouths open with amazement. But the elder one recovered his presence of mind in a trice, and, dropping on to a stool, he pulled his son by the sleeve to make him sit down too.

"Glad to see you!" he cried with ironical friendliness. "Ha, ha! What grand guests! Even the miller and Jędrzej! Quite a party!"

"Sit down, neighbours!" the young Gajda put in, throwing frightened glances round the peasants, and mechanically dipping his spoon into the dish.

But no one sat down, and not a hand was stretched out in greeting. They all stood as still as posts, and Jędrzej alone came forward, saying sternly:

"Stop eating; we have more important business in hand."

"Business? Supper is more important to us!" the old man snapped insolently.

"I tell you: stop! So stop!" Jędrzej thundered.

"Hah! You are very domineering in a strange cottage!"

"I command, and you must obey, you dirty dogs!"

The Gajdas jumped to their feet, pale and shaking with fear. But they clenched their teeth and looked as fierce as wolves, ready for anything.

"What do you want?" the younger man asked, choking with fury.

"To try you and punish you—you robbers!" Jędrzej cried in a terrible voice. It was as if the ceiling were falling on them, for they cowered under these words.

Death seemed to sweep through the silence which followed, for even breathing ceased for a moment; only the baby began to cry louder than before. Suddenly the Gajdas sprang towards the door, the younger brandishing his knife, the older man snatching up his axe; but before they could strike, the peasants had thrown themselves upon them, and in the scuffle which followed blows from sticks rained down upon them, a score of hands grasped them by the head, neck, and legs, and they were lifted bodily from the ground, like fragile plants.

The storm went round the room; there were cries and confusion; tables, benches, and chairs flew in all directions; the women sobbed; with curses and shouts, a convulsed mass of men rolled on to the floor, hit against the wall several times, and finally fell asunder.

At length the Gajdas lay on the ground, bound with ropes, like sheep, and shouting at the top of their voices. They cursed horribly as they struggled to free themselves.

"Take them to the church door; they shall be tried there!" Jędrzej ordered.

They dragged them out of the house and almost along the ground across the square, driving them on with sticks, for they resisted, yelling with all their might. The women ran by their side, sobbing and whining for pity; the men kicked them away as if they were so many bitches. "Peal the church bell! Let all the village come together!" the miller cried.

The landscape was lighted by the snow which had begun to fall heavily.

The bell rang out with a deep sound, like a fire-alarm, and then went on pealing without ceasing, mournfully and ominously, so that the crows flew up cawing from the belfry and circled over the church. From the village came a crowd of women and children, running and shouting.

"Men! Have pity! Help! For Heaven's sake!" the Gajdas shouted, trying desperately to free themselves. But no one answered; the whole crowd went on in deep silence. Thus they entered the churchyard, took their prisoners up to the church door, and threw them down there.

"What are we guilty of? What do you mean? Help!" the Gajdas shouted once more, making an effort to get up. But someone gave them a kick, and they fell down again like logs, cursing and vowing dreadful vengeance on the whole village.

Standing with his back against the church door, Jędrzej took off his cap and cried in a loud, solemn voice:

"Brothers! Poles!"

The women's screaming was hushed, and the crowd drew into a close circle, straining to listen, for the wet snow, which was falling thickly, made hearing difficult.

"I tell you this, brothers: just as the peasant goes out with his harrow in the spring to rake his field which he ploughed in the autumn, that it may be free from weeds before he puts in good seed, so now the time has come to weed out the wrong in the world.... They have already done this in other districts and parishes; they have turned out the District Clerk at Olsza, they have killed the thieves at Wola, and driven away others from Grabica. And the people have taken this upon themselves—upon themselves; for things in this world are so badly managed that we peasants have to work and sweat, pay rates, and send up recruits. But if any of us has a grievance, there is only God and useless grumbling left him."

"Ay, that's it—that's it!"

"This I tell you: the time has come for us peasant people not to look for help to anyone else, but to rely on ourselves. We must manage for ourselves; we must defend ourselves from being ill-treated, and take the law into our own hands! We have waited for long years, and had to put up with all kinds of wrongs done to us, and no one has come to the rescue or helped us in any way. For the Courts are not for those who want justice; the laws are not for peasants; and there's no protection for those who have been wronged. Everyone with any sense knows that. So there seems to be no other way but do as other villages are doing."

"Kill the carrion! Finish them off! Tear them with wild horses!" they began to shout frantically at once, attacking the Gajdas with their sticks.

"Silence! Stop there, you fools!" Jędrzej roared, putting himself in front of the Gajdas to protect them. "Wait! We all know they are robbers, thieves, and traitors who deserve punishment; but first let everyone who has anything to charge them with come forward and say it to their face. For we have come here to sentence and not to murder them. We don't want to play off our revenge on them, but to punish them justly."

The people crowded together more closely, for everyone felt awkward at being the first to come forward. There was a loud hubbub of voices as they recalled their grievances and pressed with threats towards the prisoners. At last the miller stepped forward, and, raising his hand, said solemnly:

"I swear before God and men that they stole my horses and four hundred roubles. I caught them in the act.... At the point of the knife they forced me to swear that I would not give them away. They threatened me with revenge if I did. They are robbers of the worst sort."

"And I swear that the Gajdas stole my cow," said another man.

"And they took my sow."

"And my mare and foal," others deposed.

The assembled people listened in grim silence.

The snow suddenly ceased to fall and the wind increased, beating round the church and tearing at the swaying, moaning trees; large grey clouds flew across the sky; but the steady voices continued their accusations uninterruptedly. At intervals there was an ominous murmur and the thumping of sticks, or else the Gajdas cried:

"That's not true! They're giving wrong evidence! The thieves from Wola did all that! Don't believe it!"

But fresh people came forward, accusing them of still heavier crimes.

And finally they reproached them with the murder of the Jews and with betraying the postmaster's daughters and the priest, with committing arson, joining in drinking bouts with the police, and not going to church: any known misdemeanour was hastily raked up and thrown furiously at their miserable heads. There was a great clamour, for each man tried to shout down the other, everyone cursed and swore to avenge himself, and was so eager to beat the Gajdas that Jędrzej, unable to restrain them all, shouted angrily:

"Hold your noise, and let me have a say!"

The hubbub subsided slightly, and only the women continued their quarrelsome chattering.

"Do you plead guilty?" he asked, bending over them.

"No! We're wrongly charged! They are lying—that's all their spite! We swear to it!" they cried in despair.

"If you plead guilty, you will get a lighter sentence," he urged them, relenting a little.

The miller, Jędrzej, and those few who were less excited, still tried to protect them from the enraged crowd, which moved on towards them like a storm, shouting and flourishing sticks. But the women managed to jump at them and scratch them spitefully.

The scene at the church door became more terrible every instant.

"We must have the priest here before we finish with them!... The priest!" the miller cried suddenly.

The people stopped. Someone ran to fetch the Vicar.

"Or shall we put off carrying out the sentence till to-morrow?" the miller proposed.

Thumping their sticks together, the crowd shouted:

"Let's have done with them!... No need for such scoundrels to have a priest!... Let them die like dogs! No delay, or else they'll run and fetch the Cossacks! Kill them off!"

But the Gajdas, feeling that this brought a possibility of rescue, began to implore despairingly:

"Men, have pity! Send the priest; we want to make our confession! The priest!..."

Unfortunately for them, the priest was not at home. He had gone away somewhere the previous evening.

"Then let them make their confession before all the people," someone said.

"Very good! Yes, let them confess—and tell the truth!" the rest assented.

Someone cut the ropes binding their hands, and set them on their knees before the church door.

"Open the church! They are going to make their confession! Open it!" shouted many voices.

But Jędrzej exclaimed: "No need of that! It's a sin to bring such scoundrels into the house of God; it's enough that we allow them to come on to consecrated ground. Quiet there!" he called to the dissatisfied women who kept on talking; and, bending over the Gajdas, he said:

"Now confess; but only say the plain truth. The people have power to forgive you your trespasses." He knelt down beside them, and all the rest followed his example, sighing and crossing themselves.

The Gajdas mumbled something, looking round meanwhile in all directions.

"Speak up! Louder! They even want to cheat God!" the crowd shouted indignantly.

The elder Gajda, who seemed to have lost heart completely, began to shiver, and burst out crying, confessing his sins through heavy sobs.

A dead silence spread through the crowd; no one dared to breathe, or even cough; that pitiful voice, spreading through the darkness like a pool of blood, was the only sound besides the bell pealing overhead and the soughing trees.

The people were awestruck, and their flesh began to creep. They beat their breasts in terror; here and there a moan broke from them; an icy fear penetrated them, for Gajda, while all the time throwing the blame on his son and the policeman, not only pleaded guilty to what he was accused of, but to many other even worse crimes....

When he had finished he prostrated himself with outstretched arms, striking his head on the threshold of the church door. His entreaties for mercy were so piteous that many people in the crowd began to cry also.

"Now let Kacper confess!" the men howled. "Kacper! Get on, you blackguard! Be quick!" They began to beat and kick him, till he raised himself, exclaiming furiously:

"You're blackguards yourselves! You want to murder innocent people! You're thieves and traitors yourselves!"

He cursed and threatened them dreadfully, till the old man begged him to stop.

"You'd better knuckle under, son. Confess; then perhaps they'll pardon you. Knuckle under!..."

"I won't! I won't beg for mercy from blackguards! Dogs! Damned scoundrels! Carrion! I've no need to confess myself. Let them kill me—the swine! Only let them dare to do it! The Cossacks will give it them back for me to-morrow. Only let them touch me!"

He roared this like a wild beast, and, suddenly springing to his feet and belabouring the nearest bystanders with his fists, he began to beat his way madly through the crowd. The old man slipped after him like a wolf. There was a fearful outcry, but the Gajdas were instantly overpowered and thrown down, like a bundle of rags, where they had lain before.

"They are trying to run away!" Jędrzej shouted angrily. "They are threatening vengeance! Punish them, you fellows! Beat them to death like mad dogs! Let everyone have a go at them—everyone—whoever believes in God!"

The crowd swayed like a forest, and flung itself upon the men; a hundred sticks rose and fell with a hollow crash, and the air was rent with a terrific roar as though the whole world were breaking to pieces. It was like a whirlwind raging and then suddenly subsiding. Only curses and women's shrieks and the thud of sticks were heard in the darkness now, while at moments wild, piercing cries rang out from the men who were being murdered.

And a few minutes later there was nothing at the church door but a black shapeless mass pounded into the slush; it gave out a sickly smell of blood.

The bell ceased. But the men had not yet had time to get their breath before the news spread from the village that the policeman had escaped. The peasants came running one after the other, talking and shouting:

"The policeman has made off! We went into his room when the bell began to ring, and he had gone."

"He escaped through the larder. The miller's daughter had warned him."

"Of course; we saw her go in! She gave him the tip. It was she!"

"That's a lie!" the miller bawled, springing towards them and threatening them with his fists.

"We all know that she got herself into trouble with the policeman—all of us!" the women cried; and everyone suddenly knew something about the matter, and put in his word.

Then Jędrzej began to speak again: "You people, listen! Brothers! We have punished only these; but the biggest thief has run away. We must catch him.... For that is how we will punish everyone who does wrong to the people, steals, and is a traitor. Jump on your horses and hunt him down! Quick! Get on your horses, you fellows! He has made off to the town; catch him! Alive or dead, we must get him! Hurry up there, or else he may play us a dirty trick! Look sharp!"

They poured out of the churchyard and ran hurriedly towards the village. In no time a number of peasants were tearing towards the town at full speed, their horses scattering the mud from under their feet.

The village became almost deserted, except for a few women in the churchyard, who were crying bitterly.

Keeping to the middle of the road, and heedless of the sleet beating into his face, the miller dragged himself homewards. He breathed with difficulty, and often paused, sighing heavily. At times he staggered, at times he stopped short, as though petrified; and now and then a low, pained whisper broke from the depth of his tortured heart.

"You—my daughter! So that's what you are!—With the policeman!" he repeated involuntarily.

And he clenched his fist in his bitterness; but he was trembling as in a fever, and heavy tears rolled fast down his face.

THE STRONGER SEX

By STEFAN ŻEROMSKI

Dr. Paweł Obarecki returned home in rather a bad temper from a whist-party, where he had been paying his respects to the priest, in company with the chemist, the postmaster and the magistrate, for sixteen successive hours, beginning the previous evening. He carefully locked the door of his study so that no one, not even his housekeeper, aged twenty-four, should disturb him. He sat down at the table, glared angrily at the window without knowing why, and drummed on the table with his fingers. He realized that he was in for another fit of his "metaphysics."

It is a well-established fact that a man of culture who has been cast out by the irresistible force of poverty from the centres of intellectual life into a small provincial town succumbs in time to the deadening effects of wet autumn, lack of means of communication, and the absolute impossibility of sensible conversation for days together. He develops into a carnivorous and vegetable-eating animal, drinks an excessive quantity of bottled beer, and becomes subject to fits of weariness resembling the weakness that precedes physical sickness. He swallows the boredom of a small town unconsciously, as a dog swallows dirt with his food. The actual process of decay begins at the moment when the thought "Nothing matters" takes hold of the organism. This was the case with Dr. Obarecki of Obrzydłówek. At the period of his life when this story begins, he had already come to the end of the resources of Obrzydłówek as regards his brain, his heart, and his energy.

He had an unconquerable horror of intellectual effort, could walk up and down his study for hours together, or lie on the couch with an unlighted cigar in his mouth, straining his ear to catch a sound which would foretell an interruption of the oppressive silence, anxiously longing for something to happen: if only someone would come and say something, or even turn somersaults! The autumn usually oppressed him specially; there was something painful in the silence brooding over Obrzydłówek from end to end on a late autumn afternoon—something despairing that roused one to an inward cry for help. As though a fine cobweb were being spun across it, his brain elaborated ideas which were sometimes coarse and occasionally positively absurd.

His only diversion was whistling and his conversations with his housekeeper. They turned on the remarkable superiority of roast pork stuffed with buckwheat to pork with any other kind of stuffing; but at times they became very improper.

The sky was frequently half covered by a cloud resembling enormous bays and promontories; unable to disperse, it would lie motionless, threatening to burst suddenly over Obrzydłówek and the distant lonely fields. The fine snow from this cloud would fasten in crystals on the window-panes, while the wind made weird penetrating sounds like an exhausted baby crying out its last sobs close by at a corner of the house. Stripped of their leaves and lashed by the driving snow, wild pear trees swayed their branches over the distant field paths.... There was something of a catarrhal melancholy in this landscape, which unconsciously induced sadness and restless fear. The same chronic melancholy lasted in a diminishing degree through the spring and summer. Without any tangible cause, a malignant sadness had settled in the doctor's heart. He had fallen into a fatal state of idleness, so that it had even become too much effort to read Alexis' novels.

Dr. Paweł's "metaphysics," with which he was seized from time to time, consisted in a few hours' severe self-examination. This was followed by a violent inflowing of memories, a hasty amassing of shreds of knowledge, and a furious struggle of all his nobler instincts against the stifling inactivity; he indulged in reflections, outbursts of bitterness, firm resolutions, and projects. Naturally all this led to nothing, and passed in time like any other more or less acute illness. A good sleep would cure him of "metaphysics" as of a headache, and enable him to wake up fresh the next morning, with more energy to meet the tedium of daily life, and with a greater mental capacity for the invention of the most savoury dishes. This endemia of "metaphysics" made the doctor realize, however, when his mind was filled with the philosophy of strong common sense, that beneath his existence as a well-fed animal there was a hidden wound, incurable and unspeakably painful, like that of a diseased bone.

Dr. Obarecki had come to Obrzydłówek six years before, directly after completing his medical training, with a few exceptionally useful ideas in his mind and a few roubles in his pocket. There had been a great deal of talk at that time of the necessity of finding enlightened people who would settle in God-forsaken backwood places like Obrzydłówek. He had listened to the apostles of these schemes. Young, high-minded and reckless, he had within a month of settling in the town declared war against the local chemist and barbers, who encroached upon the medical profession. It was twenty-five miles to the nearest larger town, so the local chemist had exploited the situation. Those who wished to profit by his medicaments had to pay a high price for them. He and the barbers, who got a percentage on the business, played into each others' hands. Consequently they were able to build themselves fine houses and wear "kacalyas" trimmed with bearskin. They went about with an air of dignity like "supporters"[22] at the Corpus Christi procession. When gentle hints and heated arguments had broken against the chemist's resistance, who declared the doctor's point of view to be a youthful Utopia, he scraped together a small sum and bought a travelling medicine-chest, which he carried with him on his rounds. He made up the medicines on the spot, sold them at a nominal price or gave them away, taught hygiene, made experiments, and worked perseveringly and with the utmost enthusiasm, giving himself no time for proper rest and sleep. It was a foregone conclusion that when the news of his portable chemist's shop, his giving his services to the people free of charge, and other things illustrating his point of view, became known, his windows were smashed. As Baruch Pokoik, the only glazier in Obrzydłówek, was busy at the time celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles, the doctor was obliged to paste up the window-panes with paper, and keep watch at night, revolver in hand. The windows were, in fact, broken periodically, until wooden shutters were procured for them. Rumours were spread among the common people that the doctor had intercourse with evil spirits, while the better educated were told that he was ignorant of his profession. Patients who wished to consult him were kept away by threats and noisy demonstrations outside the house.

The young doctor paid no attention to all this, and relied on the ultimate triumph of truth. But truth did not triumph—it is difficult to say why not. By the end of the year his energy was slowly ebbing away. Close contact with the ignorant masses had disillusioned him more than words can say. His lectures on hygiene, entreaties and arguments had fallen like the seed on rocky ground. He had done all that was in his power—and it had been in vain.

To speak candidly, people can hardly be expected to restore their neglected health by simple laws of hygiene when they have to go without boots in winter, dig up rotten potatoes from other people's fields in March to get themselves a meal, and grind alderbark to powder so as to mix it with a very slender supply of pilfered rye flour.

Imperceptibly things began not to matter to the doctor. "If they will eat rotten potatoes, let them eat them! I can't help it, even if they eat them raw...."

The Jewish inhabitants of the little town were the only ones who continued to consult the idealist; they were not frightened by evil spirits, and the cheapness of the medicines greatly attracted them.

One fine morning the doctor awoke to the fact that the flame of inspiration burning brightly in him when he came to the little town, and to which he had trusted to illuminate his path, was extinguished. It had burnt out of its own accord. From that moment the travelling dispensary was locked up, and the doctor was the only one to profit by its contents. It was bitterly galling to him to own himself beaten by the chemist and barbers, and to end the war by locking his medicine-chest away in his cupboard. They had the right to boast that they had conquered, and to divide the spoil. Yet he knew it was not they; he had been conquered by his own weaker nature. He had allowed his high aims and noble actions to be suppressed, maybe because he had begun to attach too much importance to good dinners. Anyway they had been suppressed. He still carried on his practice, but no one seemed to reap any real benefit from his work.

By a strange coincidence all the neighbouring country-houses were in the possession of noble families of feudal character, who treated the doctor in an antiquated manner instead of conforming to the views of the present day. Dr. Paweł had once paid a call at one of these houses, which turned out rather a failure. The nobleman received him in the study, remained in his shirt-sleeves during the interview, and went on quietly eating ham, which he cut with a penknife. The doctor felt his democratic spirit rising within him, made a few unpleasant remarks to the Count, and paid no more visits in the neighbourhood.

He had therefore no other choice than the priest and the magistrate. It is dull, however, to get too much of the priest's company, and the stories told by the magistrate were not worth following. So the doctor was left very much to his own company. To counteract the evil consequences of living alone, he made up his mind to get nearer to Nature, to recover his calm and inner harmony, and regain strength and courage by the discovery of the links which unite man with her. He did not, however, discover these links, though he wandered to the edge of the forest, and on one occasion sank into a bog in the fields.

The flat landscape was surrounded on all sides by a blue-grey belt of forest. A few firs grew here and there on grey sandhills, and waste strips of ground, belonging to God knows whom, were scattered in all directions. The only relief was given by the meadows covered with goat's-beard and yellowish grass, but even this withered prematurely—it was as if the light did not possess enough intensity to develop colour. The sun seemed to shine on that desolate spot only in order to show how arid and depressing it was.

Daily the doctor trudged, umbrella in hand, along the edge of the sandy road, which was full of holes and marked by a tumbled-down fence. This road did not seem to lead anywhere, for it divided into several paths in the middle of the meadows, and disappeared among molehills. Later on it reappeared on the top of a sandhill in the shape of a furrow, and ran into a wood of dwarf pines.

Impatient anger seized the doctor when he looked at that landscape, and a vague feeling of fear made him restless....

The years passed.

The priest's mediation had brought about a reconciliation between the doctor and the chemist, now that it was clear that the doctor's zeal for innovations had cooled. Henceforward the rivals hobnobbed at whist, although the doctor always felt a sense of aversion towards the chemist. By degrees even this slightly lessened. He began to visit the chemist, and to make himself agreeable to his wife. On one occasion he was startled by the result of analyzing his heart, which showed that he was even capable of falling platonically in love with Pani Aniela, whose intellect was as blunt as a sugar-chopper. She was under the entirely mistaken impression that she was slim and irresistible, and talked unceasingly and with unexceptionable zeal of her servant's wickedness. Dr. Paweł listened to Pani Aniela's eloquence for hours together with the stereotyped smile that appears on the lips of a youth who is making himself agreeable to beautiful women while suffering tortures from toothache.

He was no longer capable of starting democratic ideas in Obrzydłówek, though for no better purpose than that of passing the time. He had intended at first to exchange visits with the butcher, but now he would not have done it at any price. If he talked, he preferred that it should be to people with at least a pretence to education. Not only had his energy given out, but also all respect for broader ideas. The wide horizon which once the idealist's eyes could hardly perceive had dwindled down to a small circle, measurable with the toe of a boot. When he had read socialistic articles during the first stages of his moral decay, it had been with bitterness and envy, alternating with the caution of a man who has a certain amount of experience in these matters. Gradually he came to reading them with distrust, then with contempt, and at last he could not conceive why he had ever troubled himself about these ideas which had become absolutely indifferent to him. The longing to make himself into a centre for intellectual life was far from him. He doctored according to routine methods, and succeeded in working up a fairly good practice with the maxim: "Pay me and take yourself off!" His loneliness and the boredom of Obrzydłówek had become familiar to him.

And yet, in spite of everything, at this moment when he sat drumming with his fingers on the table, "metaphysics" had taken hold of him again. Already towards the end of the sixteen hours during which he had been celebrating the priest's name-day by playing whist, he had begun to feel uncomfortable. This was due to the chemist's beginning to talk atheism. Dr. Obarecki knew the hidden reason for this sudden assault on the priest's feelings quite well.

He foresaw that it was meant to be a prelude to a friendship between him and the chemist for the purpose of joining hands in a common utilitarian aim. One would write prescriptions a yard long, and the other exploit the situation. Possibly the chemist would soon pay him a visit and make an open proposal for such a partnership, and the doctor foresaw that he would not have the strength of mind to kick him out. He did not know what reasons to give for the refusal. The course that the interview would take would be this: The chemist would touch on the matter gradually, skilfully, referring to the doctor's need of capital as the cause of his being in difficulties, then bring the conversation round to Obrzydłówek affairs, and point out how much they would benefit the community by joining hands; and the end would be their paddling in the mire together.

Supposing the partnership existed? What then...?

His heart overflowed with bitterness. What had happened? How could he have gone so far? Why did he not tear himself out of the mire? He was an idler, a dreamer, corrupting his own mind—a horrible caricature of himself.

As he looked out of the window, he began to scrutinize his own weaknesses of character in an extraordinarily minute and merciless examination. The snow had begun to fall in large flakes, veiling the melancholy landscape in mist and dimness.

This capricious and unprofitable train of thought was suddenly interrupted by loud expostulations from the housekeeper, who was trying to persuade someone to go away because the doctor was not at home. But wishing to break the tormenting chain of ideas, the doctor went out into the kitchen. A huge peasant was standing there, wearing an untanned sheepskin over his shoulders. He bowed very low to the doctor, so that his lamb's-wool cap brushed the floor; then he pushed the hair back from his forehead, straightened himself, and was preparing for his speech, when the doctor cut him short.

"What's the matter?"

"Please, sir, the Sołtys[23] has sent me."

"Who is ill?"

"It's the schoolmistress in our village. She's been taken bad with something. The Sołtys came to me, and he said: 'Go to Obrzydłówek for the doctor, Ignaz,' he said.... 'Perhaps,' he said...."

"I'll come. Have you got good horses?"

"Fine fast beasts."

The doctor welcomed the thought of this drive, with its physical fatigue and even possible danger. With sudden animation he put on his stout boots and sheepskin, slipped into a fur coat large enough to cover a windmill, strapped on his belt, and went out. The peasant's "beasts" were sturdy and well-fed, though not large. The sledge had high runners and a light wicker body; it was well supplied with straw and covered with homespun rugs. The peasant took the front seat, untied his hempen reins, and gave the horses a cut with the whip.

"Is it far?" the doctor asked as they started.

"A matter of about twenty miles."

"You won't lose your way?"

"Who?... I?" He looked round with an ironical smile.

The wind across the fields was piercing. The runners, crooked and badly carved, ploughed deep furrows in the freshly fallen snow, and piled it up in ridges on either side. Nothing could be seen of the road.

The peasant pushed his cap on one side with a businesslike air, and urged on his horses. They passed a little wood, and came out on an empty space bounded by the forest which stood out against the horizon. The twilight fell, overlaying this severe desert picture with a blue light, which deepened over the forest. Balls of snow thrown up by the horses' hoofs flew past the doctor's head. He could not tell why he longed to stand up in the sledge and shout like a peasant with all his might—shout into that deaf, voiceless, boundless space which fascinated by its immensity as a precipice does. A wild and gloomy night was coming on fast, night such as falls upon deserted fields.

The wind increased and roared monotonously, changing from time to time into a solemn largo. The snow was driving from the side.

"Be careful of the road, my friend, else we shall come to grief," the doctor shouted, immediately hiding his nose again in his fur collar.

"Aho, my little ones!" bawled the peasant to the horses, by way of an answer. His voice was scarcely audible through the storm. The horses broke into a gallop.

Suddenly the snowdrifts began to whirl round madly: the wind blew in gusts; it buffeted the side of the sledge; it howled underneath; it took the men's breath away. The doctor could hear the horses snorting, but could distinguish neither them nor the driver. Clouds of snow torn from the ground sped by like a team of horses, and the thud of their hoofs seemed to fill the air. A very pandemonium had burst loose, throwing the power of its sound upward to the clouds, whence it descended again with a crash. The smooth surface was dispersed into down which enveloped the travellers. It was as if monsters were reeling in a mad giant dance, overtaking the sledge from behind, running now in front, now at the sides, and pelting it with handfuls of snow. Somewhere far away a large bell seemed to be droning in a hollow monotone.

The doctor realized that they were no longer driving on the road; the runners moved forward with difficulty and struck against the edge of ruts.

"Where are we, my good fellow?" he exclaimed in alarm.

"I am going to the forest by the fields," the man answered; "we shall get shelter from the wind under the trees. You can go all the way to the village through the forest."

As a matter of fact, the wind soon dropped; only its distant roar could be heard and the snapping of branches. The trees, powdered with snow, stood out against the dark background of night. It was impossible to proceed quickly now, for they had to make their way between snowdrifts and the stems and projecting branches.

After an hour during which the doctor had felt truly uncomfortable and alarmed, he at last heard the sound of dogs barking.

"That's our village, sir."

Dim lights flickered in the distance like moving spots. There was a smell of smoke.

"Look sharp, little ones!" the driver cheerily called out to the horses, and slapped himself after the manner of drivers.

A few minutes later they passed at full gallop a row of cottages, buried in snow up to their roofs. Heads were outlined in shadow against the window-panes from which circles of light fell on to the road.

"People are having their supper," the peasant remarked unnecessarily, reminding the doctor that it was time for the supper which he had no hope of eating that day.

The sledge drew up in front of a cottage. When the driver had accompanied the doctor through the passage, he disappeared. The doctor groped for the latch, and entered the miserable little room, which was lighted by a flickering paraffin lamp.

A decrepit old hunchback woman, bent like the crook of an umbrella handle, started from her bed on seeing him, and straightened the handkerchief round her head. She blinked her red eyes in alarm.

"Where is the patient?" the doctor asked. "Have you a samovar?"

The old woman was so perturbed that she did not grasp the meaning of his words.

"Have you a samovar? Can you make me some tea?"

"There is the samovar; but as to sugar——"

"No sugar? What a nuisance!"

"None, unless Walkowa has some, because the young lady——"

"Where is the young lady?"

"Poor thing! she's lying in the next room."

"Has she been ill long?"

"She's been ailing as long as a fortnight. She was taken bad with something."

The woman half opened the door of the next room.

"Wait a moment; I must warm myself," the doctor said angrily, taking off his fur coat.

It was not difficult to get warm in that stuffy little den; the stove threw out a terrific heat, so that the doctor went into the "young lady's" room as quickly as possible.

The lamp that was standing on a table beside the invalid's pillow had been turned low. It was not possible to distinguish the schoolmistress's features, as a large book had been placed as a screen, and the shadow from it fell on her face. The doctor carefully turned up the lamp, removed the book, and looked at her face. She was a young girl.

She had sunk into a feverish sleep; her face, neck and hands, were flushed scarlet and covered with a rash. Her ashen-blonde hair, which was exceptionally thick, was tossed round her face, and lay in rich tresses on the pillow. Her hands were plucking deliriously at the coverlet.

Dr. Paweł bent right down to the sick girl's face, and suddenly, with a voice stifled by emotion, repeated:

"Panna Stanisława, Panna Stanisława, Panna St——"

Slowly and with difficulty the sick girl raised her eyelids, but closed them again immediately. She stretched herself, drew her head from one end of the pillow to the other, and gave a painful low moan. She opened her mouth with an effort and gasped for breath.

The doctor looked round the bare, whitewashed room. He noticed the windows which did not sufficiently keep out the draught, the girl's shoes, shrivelled with having been wet through constantly, the piles of books lying on the table, the sofa and everywhere.

"Oh, you mad girl, you foolish girl!" he whispered, wringing his hands. In distress and alarm he examined her, and took her temperature with trembling hands.

"Typhus!" he murmured, turning pale. He pressed his hand to his throat to stifle the tears which were choking him like little balls of cotton.

He knew that he could do nothing for her—that, in fact, nothing could be done for her. Suddenly he gave a bitter laugh when he remembered that he would be obliged to send the twenty miles to Obrzydłówek for the quinine and antipyrin he wanted.

From time to time Stanisława opened her glassy, delirious eyes, and looked without seeing from beneath her long, curling eyelashes. He called her by the most endearing names, he raised her head, which the neck seemed hardly able to support, but all in vain.

He sat down idly on a stool and stared into the flame of the lamp. Truly misfortune, like a deadly enemy, had dealt him a blow unawares from a blunt weapon. He felt as if he were being dragged helplessly into a dark, bottomless pit.

"What is to be done?" he whispered tremblingly.

The cold blast penetrated through a crack in the window like a phantom of evil omen. The doctor felt as if someone had touched him, as if there were a third person in the room besides himself and the patient.

He went into the kitchen and told the servant to fetch the Sołtys immediately.

The old woman instantly drew on a pair of large boots, threw a handkerchief over her head, and disappeared with a comical hobble.

Shortly afterwards the Sołtys appeared.

"Listen! Can you find me a man to ride to Obrzydłówek?"

"Now, doctor?... Impossible!... There's a blizzard; he'd be riding to his death. One wouldn't turn a dog out to-night."

"I will pay—I will reward him well."

The Sołtys went out. Dr. Paweł pressed his temples, which were throbbing as though they would burst. He sat down on a barrel and reflected on something which happened long ago.

Footsteps approached. The Sołtys brought in a farmer's boy in a tattered sheepskin which did not reach to his knees, sack trousers, torn boots, and with a red scarf round his neck.

"This boy?" the doctor asked.

"He says he will go—rash youngster! I can give him a horse. But wherever at this time of——"

"Listen! If you come back in six hours, you will get twenty-five ... thirty roubles from me ... you will get what you like.... Do you hear?"

The boy looked at the doctor as if he meant to say something, but he refrained. He wiped his nose with his fingers, shuffled awkwardly, and waited.

The doctor went back to the school-teacher's bedroom. His hands were shaking, and went up to his temples automatically. He thought of a prescription, wrote it, scratched through what he had written, tore it up, and wrote a letter to the chemist instead, begging him to despatch a horseman to the town at once, to ask the doctor to send him some quinine. He bent over the sick girl and examined her afresh; then he went into the kitchen and handed the letter to the boy.

"My dear boy," he said in a strange, unnatural voice, laying his hand on the lad's shoulder and slightly shaking him, "ride as fast as the horse will go—never mind him getting winded.... Do you hear, my boy?"

The lad bowed to the ground and went out with the Sołtys.

"Is it long since the teacher settled here with you in the village?" Dr. Paweł asked the old woman who was cowering by the stove.

"It's about three winters."

"Three winters! Did no one live here with her?"

"Who should there be but me? She took me into her service, poor wretch that I am. 'You'll not find a place anywhere else, granny,' she said, 'but there isn't much to do for me, only just a bit here and there.' And now here we are; I'd promised myself that she would bury me.... God be merciful to us sinners!..."

She began unexpectedly to whisper a prayer, detaching one word from the other, and moving her lips from side to side like a camel. Her head shook and the tears flowed down the wrinkles into her toothless mouth.

"She was good——"

Granny began snivelling, and gesticulated wildly, as if she meant to drive the doctor away from her. He returned to the sick-room and began to walk up and down on tiptoe. Round after round he walked after his usual habit. Now and then he stopped beside the bed and muttered between his teeth with a rage that made his lips pale:

"What a fool you have been! It is not only impossible to live like that, but it is not even worth while. You can't make the whole of your life one single performance of duty. Those idiots will take it all without understanding; they will drag you to it by the rope round your neck, and if you let your foolish illusions run away with you, death will make you its victim; for you are too beautiful, too much beloved——"

As fire licks up dry wood, so a past and long-forgotten feeling took possession of him. It revived in him with the strength and the treacherous sweetness of former years. He persuaded himself that he had never forgotten her, that he had worshipped and remembered her up to that very moment. He gazed into the well-known face with an insatiable curiosity, and a dumb, piercing pain began to devour his heart as he thought that for three years she had been living here, near him, and he only heard of it when death was on the point of taking her away from him.

All that was befalling him this day seemed to be the consequence of his animal existence, which had led him nowhere except to burrow in the ground. Yet he felt as if suddenly a mysterious horizon opened out before him, an ocean spreading far away into the mist.

With all the effort of impatient despair he grasped at memories, seeking refuge in them from an intolerable reality; he plunged into them as into the rosy halo of a summer dawn. He felt he must be alone, if only for a moment, to think and think. He slipped into a third room which was filled with forms and tables. Here he sat down in the dark to collect his thoughts and contrive some way of saving his patient.

But he began to recall memories:

He was then a poor student in his last year. When he went to the hospital on winter mornings, he stepped carefully so that not everyone should notice how cleverly the holes in his boots had been mended with cardboard. His overcoat was as tight as a strait-jacket, and so threadbare that the old-clothes man would not even give a florin for it when he tried to sell it in the summer. Poverty made him pessimistic, and produced that state of sadness which is more than mere unpleasant depression, but less than actual suffering. To be roused from it, one need only eat a chop or drink a glass of tea; but he frequently had no tea to drink, to say nothing of a dinner to eat. He used to run along the muddy Dłvga Street so as to enter the gate of the Saski Gardens by a quarter to nine.

Here he would meet a young girl and walk past her, looking at her long, heavy, ashen-blonde pigtails. She would not look up, but knitted her brows, which reminded one of the narrow, straight wings of a bird. He used to meet her there daily in the same place. She always walked quickly to the suburb beyond, where she entered a tram going to Praga.

She was not more than seventeen, but looked like a little old maid in her handkerchief thrown carelessly over her fur cap, in her clumsy, old-fashioned cloak, and shoes a size too large for her small feet. She always carried books, maps, and writing materials under her arm. On one occasion, finding himself in possession of a few pence, which were to have paid for his dinner, he was resolved to discover what her daily destination was. He therefore set out in pursuit, and entered the same car, but after he had sat down all his courage had failed him. The unknown measured him with such a look of absolute disdain that he jumped out of the tram immediately, having lost his bowl of broth and achieved nothing.

Yet he felt no grudge towards her; on the contrary, this had only raised her in his estimation. He thought about her unconsciously and uninterruptedly; he strove through the course of whole hours to call to mind her hair, her eyes, her mouth, the colour of her lips. And yet he strained his memory in vain. For scarcely had she vanished from his sight than her features vanished from his memory. Instead there was left a vision like a white cloud without any distinct features; it seemed to hover over him. His thoughts pursued that cloud in longing and humble timidity, with a touch of unconscious regret, sadness, and sympathy, which dominated him altogether.

He used to go every morning to compare the living girl with his vision, and the reality seemed to him the more beautiful of the two; her eyes, thoughtful, and clear like a spring, filled him with a certain sense of awe.

At that time one of his fellow-students, nicknamed "Movement in Space," unexpectedly got married. He was a great "social reformer," continually writing endless prefaces to works he never finished for lack of the necessary books of reference. His wife was a feminist and as poor as a church mouse. Her dowry consisted in an old carpet, two stewing-pans, a plaster cast of Mickiewicz, and a pile of school prizes. The young couple lived on the fourth floor and promptly began to starve. They both gave private lessons so zealously that after separating in the morning they did not meet again till the evening. Nevertheless their house began to be the centre towards which each "social reformer" wended his way in his dirty boots, in order to sit for a while on the "Movement's" soft sofa, smoke his cigars, argue till he was hoarse, and in the end contribute a few pence towards the entertainment. The amiable hostess bought rolls and sausages, which she arranged artistically on a plate and handed round to her guests. You were always sure to meet someone interesting here, to become acquainted with great people as yet unknown to their age, and possibly you might even have a chance of borrowing sixpence.

Obarecki had turned pale with joy when one evening, on entering the room, he had found his beloved among the circle of friends. He had talked to her and lost his head completely. While walking home with the others that evening, he had had a longing to be alone—neither to dream nor to think of her, but just to steep his soul in her presence, see her and hear the sound of her voice, think as she did, and let the pictures which rose in his imagination take possession of him. He now distinctly remembered her wonderful eyes, with their bewildering depth, severe yet sympathetic, gentle and mysterious. He had experienced a feeling of joy and repose; as if, after a hot, wearisome journey, he had lighted upon a cool spring, hidden in the shade of pines on a high hill.

They had surrounded her with respect, and seemed to attach special importance to her words. In introducing Obarecki, the "Movement" had said, with an air of importance, "Obarecki, a thinker, a dreamer, a great idler, yet the coming man—Panna Stanisława, our Darwinist."

The "great idler" had not been able to ascertain much about the "Darwinist"; merely that she had left the High School, was giving lessons, and intended to go to Paris or Zurich to study medicine, but had not a penny to bless herself with.

From that time onwards they frequently met in their friends' rooms. Panna Stanisława would sometimes bring a pound of sugar under her cloak, or a cold cutlet wrapped in paper, or a few rolls; Obarecki never brought anything, for he had nothing to bring; but instead he devoured the rolls and the "Darwinist" with his eyes.

One night, when escorting her home, he got as far as proposing to her. She only broke into a hearty laugh and took leave of him with a friendly grasp of the hand. Shortly afterwards she had disappeared; he heard that she had gone as governess into some aristocratic family in Podolia.

And now he had found her again in this forsaken corner, in this forest village inhabited only by peasants, with not a single intelligent person near her. She had been living here all alone in this wilderness. And now she was dying.... All his former enthusiasm, and the unfulfilled dreams and desires of past days, suddenly sprang up within him and struck him like gusts of wind. A deadly pain seized his heart, and the poison of passion took hold of his blood. He returned on tiptoe to the sick-room, rested his elbows on the bed, and feasted on the sight of the marvellous contours of her bare shoulders and the lines of her bosom and neck. The girl was asleep; the veins on her temples were swollen, the corners of her mouth were moist, she exhaled fever heat, and drew in the air with a loud whistling sound. Dr. Paweł sat down beside her on the edge of the bed, gently fondled the ends of her soft, bright hair, and stroked it along his face, sobbing while he kissed it.

"Stasia, Stachna! Dearest!" he whispered low. "You are not going to run away from me again, are you?... Never! ... you will be mine for ever ... do you hear?—for ever...."

The exuberance of youth awoke in him from its lethargy. Henceforth everything would be different; he felt a great strength in him for doing his work with his heart in it. Pain and hope were mingled as in a flame which consumed him and gave him no respite.

The night wore on. Though the hours went by slowly, more than six had passed since the messenger left. It was four o'clock in the morning. The doctor listened, starting up at every sound. He fancied each moment that someone was coming—opening the door—tapping at the window. He strained and strained with his whole organism to listen. The wind howled, the door of the stove rattled; then again there was silence. The minutes passed like ages; his nerves, overstrained by impatience, threw him into a state of trembling all over.

When he took her temperature for the sixth time, the sick girl slowly opened her eyes; they looked almost black under their shade of dark lashes. Straining to look at him, she said in a hoarse voice:

"Who's that?"

But she fell back at once into her former state of unconsciousness. He cherished this moment as if it were a treasure. Oh, if only he had some quinine to lessen the pain in her head and restore her to consciousness! But the messenger had not arrived, and did not arrive.

Before dawn Dr. Obarecki walked the length of the village through the deep snowdrifts, deluding himself with a last hope of seeing the boy. An evil foreboding penetrated his heart like the point of a needle. The wind still howled in the bare branches of the wayside poplars with a hollow sound, although the storm had abated. Women were coming out of the cottages to fetch water, their skirts tucked up above their knees. The farm lads were busy with the cattle; smoke was rising from the chimneys. Here and there a cloud of steam issued from a door which was opened for an instant.

The doctor found the Sołtys' house, and ordered horses to be put in at once. Two pairs were harnessed, and a lad drove them up to the school. The doctor took leave of the patient with eyes dilated with fatigue and despair, got into the sledge, and drove to Obrzydłówek.

He returned at two o'clock in the afternoon, bringing drugs, wine, and a store of provisions. He had stood up in the sledge almost all the way, longing to jump out and run faster than the horses, which were going at a gallop. He drove straight up to the school, but what he saw made him powerless to move from his seat.... A short, stifled cry burst from his lips, twisted with pain, when he saw that the windows were thrown wide open. A throng of children were crowded together in the passage. White as a sheet he walked to the window and looked in, standing there with his elbows resting on the window-sill.

On a bench in the schoolroom lay the naked body of the young teacher; two old women were washing it. Tiny snowflakes flew in through the window and rested on the shoulders, damp hair, and half-open eyes of the dead girl.

Bent double, as though bearing a mountain-load on his shoulders, the doctor entered the little bedroom. He sat down and repeated dully: "It is so—it is so!" He felt as if huge rusty wheels were turning with a terrific rattle in his head.

Stasia's bed was all in disorder; the window-frames rattled monotonously; the leaves of her plants were being caught by the frost, and drooped.

Through the half-open door the doctor saw some peasants kneeling round the body, which was now clothed; the children too had come in and were reading prayers from books; the carpenter was taking measurements for the coffin. He went in and gave orders in a husky voice for the coffin to be made of unplaned boards, and a heap of shavings to be placed under the head.

"Nothing else ... do you hear?" he said to the carpenter with suppressed rage. "Four boards ... nothing else...."

He remembered that someone ought to be informed—her family.... Where was her family? With an aimless activity he began to arrange her books, school-registers, notebooks and manuscripts into a pile. Among the papers he came upon the beginning of a letter.

"Dear Helenka" (it ran)—"I have felt so ill for some days past that I am probably going into the presence of Minos and Rhadamanthus, Aeacus, Triptolemus, and many others of the kind. In case of my removing to another place, please ask the Mayor of my village to send you all my property, consisting of books. I have at last finished my little primer, Physics for the People, over which we have so often racked our brains. Unfortunately I have not made a fair copy. If you have time—in case of my removal—arrange for the publication at once. Let Anton copy it out; he will do this for me.

"Oh, bother!... I just remember I owe our bookseller eleven roubles sixty-five kopeks; pay him with my winter coat, for I have no money.... Take for yourself in remembrance...."

The last words were illegible. There was no address; it was not possible to send off the letter. The doctor discovered the manuscript of the Physics in the table drawer. It consisted of notes on slips of paper, mixed up with rubbish of all kinds. There was a little underlinen, a cloak lined with catskin, and an old black skirt, in the wardrobe.

While the doctor busied himself in this way, he suddenly noticed the boy who had been sent for the remedies in the schoolroom. He was huddled against a corner of the stove, treading from one foot to the other. Savage hatred sprang up in the doctor's heart.

"Why did you not come back in time?" he cried, running up to the boy.

"I lost my way in the fields ... the horse gave out.... I arrived on foot in the morning ... the young lady was already——"

"You lie!"

The boy did not answer. The doctor looked into his eyes, and was overcome by a strange feeling. Those eyes were weary and terrible; a peasant's stupid, mute, wild despair lurked in them as in an underground cavern.

"Here, sir, I have brought back the books the teacher lent me," he said, drawing some worn, soiled books from under his coat.

"Leave me alone! Be off!" the doctor cried, turning away and hurrying into the next room.

Here he stood among the rubbish, the books and papers thrown on the floor, and asked himself with a harsh laugh: "What am I doing here? I am no good; I have no right to be here!"

A feeling of profound reverence made him think the dead girl's thoughts in deep humility. Had he remained an hour longer, he would have risen to the heights where madness dwells. Without wishing to confess it to himself, he knew that it was fear on his own account which was taking possession of him. Throughout all that was overwhelming him at this moment, he felt that, a great lack of balance was threatening to deprive him of the essence of human feeling—of egoism. To stifle egoism would mean his allowing himself to be enveloped by the same rosy mist which had transported this girl from the earth. He must escape at once. Having decided on this, he began to despair in beautiful phrases which immediately brought him considerable relief. He ordered the sledge to be brought round.... Bending over Stasia's body, he whispered all the beautiful, empty things which people say in praise of greatness. He lingered once more in the doorway and looked back; for a second he wondered whether it would not be better to die at once. Then he pushed past the peasants crowding round the door, sprang into the sledge, tripped himself up, tumbled on his face, and was carried off, stifled by spasmodic sobs.

Stanisława's death exercised so much influence over Dr. Paweł's disposition that for some time afterwards, in his leisure moments, he read Dante's Divine Comedy; he gave up playing whist, and dismissed his housekeeper, aged twenty-four. But gradually he grew calm. He is now doing exceedingly well; he has grown stout, and has made a nice little sum. He has even revived some of his optimistic tendencies. For thanks to his energetic agitation, all the world in Obrzydłówek, with the exception of a few conservatives, is now smoking cigarettes rolled by themselves, instead of buying ready-made ones which are known to be injurious.

At last!...

THE CHUKCHEE

By WACŁAW SIEROSZEWSKI

The country was shrouded in the bitter Arctic night. Cold mists swept along the ground below; a dark sky, spangled with stars, stretched above.

A man was standing on the steps of a little house with small windows and a flat roof; his head was bare, his hands were thrust deep into his pockets. He was gazing fixedly towards the south, where the first dawn was to break upon the long darkness. At times he fancied that he could already see it there, for something seemed to quiver in the infinite darkness; but then the changing mist merely swayed to and fro, and the stars trembled on the horizon. His weary eyes therefore turned towards the little town; his house stood on the outskirts of it. Lights were twinkling in the windows there, and the dogs in the various backyards were yelping and howling loudly in chorus. "Oh, how deadly this is!" he thought—"enough to drive anyone mad. And in a frost like this it's certain no one will come."

He was just turning to go indoors, when he caught the sound of snow creaking under quick footsteps. He began to listen; the footsteps turned into the path leading up to his house.

"Is that you, Józef?"

"Yes; how are you?" a voice, hoarse with the frost, cried from a distance; and presently a man of middle height, dressed in fur from head to foot, emerged from the darkness. "What are you doing, you silly fellow, standing out here in a blouse in cold like this? You are certain to catch pneumonia."

"And why not?... A year sooner or later——"

"All very fine! But I confess to you, Stefan, I shouldn't like to die here. One can't even decay like a human being; one would have to lie here for centuries like an ice statue, while the dogs would howl and howl——"

"Well, they are howling unbearably now; it's as if they scented something. They are worse than ever to-day."

"They are certain to smell something; in the town they say that the Chukchee are encamping here, and I have just come to tell you of it. But let us go indoors; it's terribly cold, worse than it has yet been this year."

They went in. Stefan lighted the fire and busied himself with getting tea ready; Józef threw off his furs and paced up and down the room with long strides.

"I say! This news is not quite without importance for us."

"What?"

"That they have come."

"The Chukchee?"

"Why, yes!"

Stefan burst out laughing.

"It's imperative for us to make friends with them; they are said to trade with America."

"Then with whom are we to make friends? With the Yankees?"

"No, with the Chukchee. Do be serious. You must do it, and it will be easy enough for you with your workshop,—all kinds of people constantly come to you. I will persuade Buza, the Cossack, to bring them; you will have a first-rate interpreter."

"By all means persuade Buza——"

"Oh, stop that! You always pretend to be indifferent to everything. If I had your health and strength, and were as clever——"

"Then you would be as homesick as I am, and pretend to care as little——"

"Do you think that I am not homesick?"

"No, I don't think you are—not in the least. You have a happy disposition, and can distract yourself with books and plans and dreaming, even if it is only for a short time. I must live, work, be active; I need impressions from outside. Otherwise I go utterly to pieces; I feel that I am slowly dying."

They sat down to tea and chatted until midnight. In that continuous darkness the late hours of night differed from the rest in the position of the stars, a harder frost with louder reports of the cracking ground, the fact that the fires in the cottages were extinguished, and the quieter but more dismal howling of the dogs.

"Then remember that I will bring them. Do something to take their fancy; you know how to do it."

"Very good. It just happens that I have the District Administrator's musical box here to repair; I will play it to them."

"That will delight them. 'A talking box'—I can imagine what they will say! And don't forget to buy vodka for them, and to entertain Buza also. We shall have need of him. I don't yet know what we shall decide upon—I don't even try to think about it; but I feel that something will come of this...."

"What?... Nothing will come of it. There will not even be any vodka left as a result, for they will drink it all up."

"You horrible pessimist! You always poison everything for me!" Józef cried from the hall, and he banged the door after him.

Stefan stood in the middle of the room for a long while, listening to Józef's brisk footsteps. He was smiling, for he liked to be accused of being a pessimist.

A few days later, sitting at the table with his back towards the door, and busy with his work, he heard a curious noise outside—someone stamping and pulling at the strap which served as a latch, as if unused to it.

Stefan turned his head inquiringly, and at the same moment a flat, brown face appeared in the doorway.

"Go in! Go in! You will let the cold into the cottage," someone cried from the hall.

Stefan recognized Buza's voice.

"Come in, by all means!"

"They have no manners. They are real Chukchee. This one is called Wopatka; he has been baptized. He is rather a drunkard, and rather a thief, but a good fellow. And this one—it's better not to touch him—is Kituwia.... Don't touch him!"

The natives stood quietly in the middle of the room, and looked round inquisitively, but without the slightest bewilderment. Their furs, which they wore with the skin turned to the inside, hung about them heavily and clumsily. They appeared to Stefan to be very much alike. But Kituwia had a darker complexion, and there was evidence in his unmoving face, erect head, and compressed lips of a hard pride, amounting to contempt for all and everything.

Wopatka fell into a broad grin as he glanced eagerly with his slanting eyes round the room, which was so large and well furnished in comparison with his own tent.

"Take off your cap," Buza said to him, nudging him with his elbow.

Wopatka hastily pulled off his cap and showed the usual conical-shaped Chukchee head.

Kituwia had no cap. His long, thick, tousled hair was held back by a narrow strap tied just above his forehead. A similar strap from his low-cut skin jerkin crossed his bare chest and neck. He gave Stefan a sharp look, and uttered a few disconnected guttural sounds to his companion.

"There! Do you hear?" Buza said with a laugh. "They speak exactly like reindeer. They believe in reindeer, too; they think they will always have them in the next world. But Pan Józef told me to bring them, so I have brought them."

"Very good. I will get tea for you at once—or perhaps vodka would be better?"

"That would be better, for they don't think much of tea."

Stefan showed them a magnet, and made the cuckoo-clock strike to amuse them. He had a certain amount of success with the clock; Wopatka was delighted, but Kituwia's restrained manner threw a chill over everything. The fire crackled merrily in the chimney; the guests threw off their furs and lolled on the benches; Buza burst out laughing from time to time, and Wopatka chuckled quietly, but Kituwia ran his keen glance from one object to another. However, at last even his face lighted up, and, uttering a smothered cry, he pointed to some large stones tied as a weight to the drying reindeer sinews. The guests formed a circle round these and tried to lift them with outstretched arms, but only Kituwia could do this.

When Stefan did the same, the native's face brightened with a look of friendliness. He called Stefan "brother," and passed his hand caressingly over his back and shoulders.

"He is praising you and asking why he never sees you among the people round the tavern."

"Tell him that I haven't time; I am busy."

While Buza was explaining this, Kituwia's face assumed an expression of stony contempt.

"He doesn't believe that you are a smith—and that you are respected by the District Administrator all the same. He is just an ignorant native. With them a strong man only drinks and fights, and looks upon the rest as low."

The guests conscientiously ate and drank what was offered them. At parting Wopatka said, "Brother! Brother!" a countless number of times. The disagreeable smell of badly tanned reindeer skin and rancid reindeer grease remained behind them when they were gone.

"Your fame will spread among the Chukchee; you will have no peace now," Buza said to Stefan in the hall. "We thank you for your invitation. When will you send for us again?"

"Ask Pan Józef!"

"Well, did they come?" Józef asked on the following day.

"I should rather think so! I was obliged to air the room for several hours afterwards."

"Did they not invite you to visit them?"

"No."

"We must have patience. They will invite us. Buza told me they are enchanted."

"Buza himself seemed to be the most enchanted. He ate and drank enough for three."

"And Wopatka?"

"What is there to say about him? He certainly seems a good hand at vodka. He is not up to much."

"No need to despise people like that; they will prepare the way excellently, and others will follow. One must wait patiently; I beg you be patient. I will arrange it. Last night I went to see Father Pantelay, the missionary. He is learning Chukchee. By-and-by we may be able to do something. We must learn to understand their customs and be friendly with them, so that they may get to like us. Don't grumble about them."

"I am not grumbling, but—they sat here too long."

"Well, we also have been sitting here too long."

Several days passed. The Chukchee did not show themselves. Despite his assumed indifference and incredulity, Stefan was a little anxious, and looked round hastily every time the door opened.

It was late. Having just finished his work, and blown out the candle for the sake of economy, Stefan was musing in the firelight, when his attention was attracted by unusual sounds from outside—a curious noise and shuffling. Then the house door opened violently and banged to; someone rushed panting into the room and held the door against someone else who tried to open it. Stefan jumped up in astonishment and hastily lighted the candle. A Chukchee was standing at the door, covered with snow. He had wound the latch strap round his hand, and, steadying himself with his foot against the door, was pulling at it with all his might. It shook in the struggle. The native looked at Stefan, made an imploring gesture, and showed that he was defenceless. From the hall came the sound of an impatient, hoarse voice cursing, accompanied by heavy kicks on the door. Stefan fancied that he recognized the voice.

"Who's there? Stop that kicking at once! To the devil with you!" he exclaimed angrily.

The tugging ceased. There was a sound of muttering for some time longer, but when footsteps were heard approaching the unknown person left the hall. The Chukchee dropped the strap and turned to Stefan.

"Brother! Gem Kamakatan"—and he pointed to himself—"Gem no knife ... Gem ... brother!" He made a pretence of falling to indicate that he would have been killed. His eyes were friendly; his fat, ugly face, with its wide, extended nostrils, expressed emotion and gratitude. "Brother! Anoai! Anoai!"

He went to the fire and began to shake the snow out of his skin jerkin. His furs, hair, and ears were full of it. He indicated by violent shuddering that he was wet, and that the water was running down his body under his clothes. He began to fain shivering and dying.

Stefan knew perfectly well that in weather as cold as this even a Chukchee would freeze to death in damp clothes. He guessed what the native wanted, and nodded.

"Gem Kamakatan" laughed and began to undress quickly. The next moment he emerged from his furs naked like a Greek statue, and Stefan watched with interest what would happen further. The Chukchee calmly hung his clothes in front of the fire, looked round, and, seeing Stefan's bed ready for the night, jumped in with great glee and disappeared under the quilt.

All this was done so adroitly and unexpectedly that Stefan could not help bursting out laughing. The Chukchee drew his head from under the quilt again, and repeated in a friendly way: "Brother! Brother!"

"Well, has he been here?" asked Józef, coming in at his usual hour.

"He is here even now."

Stefan told his friend of the whole strange adventure.

"Excellent! Excellent! Things are moving," the latter repeated, walking on tiptoe.

"There's nothing excellent about it. I wish he were sleeping in your bed. He looks as if he had never washed or combed himself in his life. If he had at least cut his hair; but he wears it long, as if he wished to make himself objectionable like Kituwia."

"That's nothing; these things are comparative trifles. Let me see him. The longer his hair is, the better; for in that case he is a warrior and a celebrity. Did he tell you his name?"

"Yes; it's something queer like Gem Kamaka."

They took the candle and went cautiously up to the bed where the native, with his copper face in an aureole of long matted hair, lay asleep on a white European pillow. Suddenly his eyelids quivered and his eyes opened wide. For a moment he looked in astonishment at the men standing beside him; then he jumped up and stretched out his bare arm with a despairing gesture.

"Brother! Brother!" he whispered—"Anoai!"

"Brother!" Stefan quickly repeated, touching him kindly.

The native's face brightened with a childish laugh. He jumped lightly out of bed and ran for his clothes.

"A fine model!" Józef exclaimed, slapping his back in a friendly way.

The native turned round with a start. In order to reassure him, therefore, Józef went through the whole of his Chukchee vocabulary; and though "Gem-Kamaka" certainly did not understand much of this disconnected conversation, he grinned and repeated every word. His clothes being still wet, he sat down as he was at the table where the friends were drinking tea, and consented to eat something too, talking uninterruptedly in his reindeer dialect, and showing his large white teeth as he laughed heartily. Before he left he again laid his hand gratefully on Stefan's shoulder and said "Brother!" He also promised to bring his wife and parents to see him.

"And bring Buza, Wopatka, and Kituwia."

The Chukchee's face clouded a moment. "Very well—and Buza and Wopatka. We will drink vodka," he said in the local Russian-Chukchee jargon.

"We will drink vodka."

After he was gone Józef embraced Stefan excitedly.

"This is splendid—first-rate! I already see myself on the ship."

A considerable time passed; the continuous darkness began to be pierced by rosy gleams. But nothing was heard of the Chukchee. On the contrary, it appeared to Stefan as if those who came into the town avoided him. When Kituwia met him, he did not come near or even nod to him: sometimes he stared at Stefan with a threatening look in his eyes. Wopatka turned aside when he saw him in the street. "Gem Kamatakan" gave no news of himself, and Buza, on being questioned, declared that he really knew nothing about him.

"Gem-Kama, did you say? That's not even a name, let alone its having any meaning. I know every Chukchee word, but I never heard that. Perhaps he is one of those natives who live without faith or law in outlandish parts of the country—in a word, a brigand. But never fear; I have only to find out where 'Gem-Kama' is, and I will get him here. But what brought him to you two gentlemen?"

"What brought him? He came of his own accord."

Buza looked at Józef suspiciously.

"The Chukchee say that Pan Stefan and a Chukchee together beat Kituwia; only the Chukchee was not called Gem-Kam, but Otowaka. The Chukchee in this district respect Kituwia very much, and are afraid of him. They say that he is a true Chukchee—a warrior. They are a wild people, but they have their customs; they are not like the Yakut."

"But it's not true! Nothing of the kind happened. Ask Kituwia."

"No, thank you; he would only knock me down! A man must not only be careful not to ask him about it, but must not even show that he knows. Wopatka told me of it."

"Where are we to look for you if we need you?"

"People will tell you where;—the tavern is the best, for a good deal of business of different kinds is being done with the Chukchee just now, and I am interpreter. You can't get them to do anything without vodka."

A few more days had passed, when suddenly such a remarkable thing happened that all the inhabitants of the little town came out to watch it. A number of festively dressed Chukchee on two sledges, each drawn by two pairs of fine reindeer, drove up at full gallop to Stefan's house. Stefan went out on to the steps to meet them. The first to alight was an old Chukchee, dressed in a costly "docha" made of black rat, skilfully embroidered, and edged with beaver. He supported himself as he walked by resting his hand lightly on the shoulders of his sons, who held his feet by the ankles and respectfully placed them on the steps. They were followed by a boy of nine, his head bare and his hair closely cropped, and then came two small, alert, queer-looking individuals. One wore a docha of black rat, similar to the old man's but not so good; the second had no outer wrap at all, but, dressed in tight-fitting fur, looked like a gnome escaped from the forest. By their plaits, which were bound up with tinkling silver ornaments, and by the raspberry-coloured silk handkerchiefs across their foreheads, Stefan knew that these were ladies. They were both tattooed. The elder one had blue waving lines worked in silk on her forehead and cheeks; the younger had deep scars along her nose and chin. Her figure was not without charm; she was slim, and moved gracefully. She had the Chukchee woman's eyes, and her face, which was rather large, expressed a certain amount of determination. The general impression was spoilt, however, by a nervous habit of looking behind her.

"Well, here they are!" Józef cried, hurrying in after the guests. "Receive them somehow, and I will fetch Buza at once."

"Anoai! Anoai!" the Chukchee greeted their host.

There were too many guests for the available seats, so Stefan pulled out some rugs from a corner and spread them in the middle of the floor. Sitting down on them in a circle, the natives began to chatter. One of the old man's sons was the Chukchee who had dried his clothes at Stefan's fire. He was evidently relating the adventure—certainly not for the first time. Yet they all listened attentively, assenting with friendly grunts and looking with interest at the bed; the younger woman even jumped up and peeped under the quilt, whereupon they all burst out laughing. When the clock struck, the cuckoo and its movements and sound made an immense impression, and the little boy shouted with delight. They all jumped up and stood in front of the clock, imitating it, and when the door shut with a snap behind the little bird they sprang away in fright at first, but ended by laughing loudly. However, the old man could put a stop to their merriment in a moment if he chose.

Buza, Wopatka, and Józef now came in.

"Well, I told you so! It's Otowaka, not Gemka. There's certainly no such person as Gemka, and 'gem-kamatakan' means in Chukchee, 'I am ill.' It's a great honour that old Otowaka has come to you himself. He's very proud, and the richest man in the country—quite the richest. You have been most successful."

He sat down in the circle of Chukchee with Wopatka, who kept a little behind him. Józef helped Stefan to prepare the feast and boil the samovar. They sent out for water.

"He is a much-respected man. He has innumerable reindeer, three wives in three different places, and six sons," Buza said, growing proportionately communicative as the vodka and food disappeared. "You have been very successful. He is rewarding you and doing you honour. You have only to go to him, and he will give you valuable furs; he will even give a daughter to each of you. He has beautiful daughters; I saw them in the town as they passed through in the caravan. For these Otowakas come from a long distance, so they travel in caravans. He evidently wants to ask you to do some work for him, for he wished to know whether you were a good locksmith and could put together a foreign rifle which has been taken to pieces. The Americans always sell them arms without cock or trigger. So I told him you had clever fingers, and that even the District Inspector thinks highly of you. The old man listened to this carefully. He is sure to offer you a present, and you must take it, or he will be very much offended."

The magnet and other wonders Stefan was able to show them caused the greatest delight to the natives, but their merriment reached its height when Józef started to play the barrel organ. They hung over the box, laid their ears to it, poked their noses into it, grunted and stamped in rhythm, and finally began to move in a slow dance. Their eyes laughed, and their faces shone with grease and perspiration.

"Hey! Come along! Jump up, Wopatka! Now, that's most graceful!" Buza exclaimed, pulling the Chukchee, who was half tipsy, by the arm.

At that moment the door opened wide and Kituwia appeared on the threshold. Józef, very much pleased, went towards him, but the Chukchee neither stirred nor gave the usual greeting, "Anoai!" He closed the door behind him, and, leaning against it, held out one hand in an attitude of defence, and laid the other on his neck. His hair stood out wildly from under the leather band, and his eyes glowed with a wolfish fierceness. At the sight of him the circle of merry people in the middle of the room became petrified. The old man looked darkly at the bold intruder, the young men bent forward as if ready to spring at him, the women stared with wide-open mouths.

"What do you want?" cried Stefan, advancing. "Be off!"

"Go out! Take yourself off when you aren't invited!" Buza said, coming forward to support his host. "Be careful not to go near him," he added to Stefan, "or he will run you through. You see how he lays his hand on his neck: he has a knife there; I can see he has—I can see it by the strap on his neck. What do you mean by bringing a knife with you into the town, you damned scoundrel? Don't you know that's forbidden? I'll tell the Inspector, and to the end of your life you'll never be allowed to come into the town again. You'll be sent away to the tundra at once. Give me the knife."

"I will give it you directly, but I want it first for that dog whom I have chased like a hare all over the country," Kituwia calmly answered in Chukchee.

One of the young Chukchee sprang towards him, but Józef seized him by the shoulder. Neither he nor Stefan understood what the natives were talking about, but they guessed that there was a quarrel.

"You would do better to drink this and join us," Józef said in a conciliatory way, taking Kituwia a glass. The latter pushed it aside.

"That's bad!... He won't drink vodka," Buza cried in Russian. "They will go for one another presently!... Hey! be off! You won't take vodka from the gentleman himself? Who do you think you are? I will call the Cossacks directly! Do you behave like this in a gentleman's house? And it's not long since you were entertained here! You tundra dog! I will have you taken up at once. Ha, ha! don't try it on me! You know who I am. Let me go by at once; I will go and call the guard. But you keep him talking here," he whispered to Stefan.

He turned towards the entrance, but retreated immediately, for Kituwia started forward, and the dangerous quiver of his lips showed his large white teeth. In a moment the room was in an uproar. Stefan, Buza, and Kituwia, surrounded by struggling Chukchee, burst through the door, which opened with a crash, and into the hall. Stefan lay with his chest on Kituwia's chest; the native struggled beneath him and tried unsuccessfully to free his hand. Stefan was thus able to seize him by the throat. Kituwia choked and shook his head until he became exhausted. Someone broke the strap on his neck with a jerk, and a large broad-bladed knife flew jingling into a corner. Buza, in the street, called for the Cossacks, and a large crowd of people came on to the scene. Stefan and Józef were now, in their turn, obliged to defend the enfeebled Kituwia from the Chukchee's rage. At last twenty-five Cossacks appeared; the assailant was arrested and led off to prison, the crowd following him with insults.

"You'll have a nice time!... A nice look-out for you!... You'll get thirty such good lashes you won't want to sit down for a year to come!... You'll remember what it is to come here with a knife!... Perhaps you still want to butcher us all?... Ah, you are short-handed now! Times have changed!"

The warrior looked at them fiercely and shrugged his bound shoulders.

"What is it all about?" Stefan and Józef asked Buza.

"Who knows anything about them?" he answered with indifference. "Anyhow, they are drunk."

"No, no; that's not it," a fisherman remarked. "It's an old quarrel that has come down to them from their forefathers, and now they say it's about Otowaka's daughter-in-law, Kituwia's own sister. Young Aimurgin stole her. That's long ago, and they now have children, but ... what memories these fellows have! I expect the old man paid a good sum, for he was willing to make it up, but Kituwia never would. They say that he had been living with his sister ... they aren't baptized—though those who are often do the same. So Kituwia wanted to take the woman away; but Otowaka certainly could not allow that, or he would have had no peace on the tundra."

Buza became the hero of the hour, and received frequent invitations to supper. After vodka, but not before, he related in detail what had happened:

"They were all drinking together and enjoying themselves. They were playing the District Administrator's barrel organ and dancing—even Otowaka himself was stamping his foot.... It would certainly have ended badly if I hadn't seized him, for I saw him put his hand on his neck."

"You'll catch it from him! He'll pay you out for this! You know him."

"How can he pay me out? I walk along the street quite openly; he had better be careful himself. He has been sent away from the town. When I see him I'll collar him at once and put him in prison. He had better look out. For if he comes my way ... by God!... I'll knock him down—I'll just knock him down! Don't let him forget! Why should I be particular about a brigand like that, when Otowaka himself offers me his friendship?"

Otowaka remained near the town for some time longer, but was rarely seen. Józef and Stefan visited him in his encampment, where he received them in an exceptionally friendly manner. He did not offer them his daughters, but wished to give them a place of honour above even the missionary, whom, together with Buza, he often entertained in recollection of his son's adventure. The friends would not agree to this, and thus won Father Pantelay's favour for all time, drawing from him golden words on the humility which wins a man heaven.

"I am urging him to seek the Divine grace and be baptized," he said, looking towards the old Chukchee....

They were offered dessert—frozen reindeer marrow, chopped fine and arranged in small heaps—which, being hard, was moistened with a plentiful supply of vodka, as may be imagined. "It would be safer for him to be baptized. He could encamp on the western tundra."

"Well, is he willing?"

"He doesn't refuse, but says that he will see."

Before they left, the rich man presented each guest with a foxskin, and begged him to be so kind as to visit him on the tundra.

"There I am in my right place; that's my own country."

Józef's eyes sparkled.

"What do you think—can we go, Father?" he asked the missionary when they reached home.

Father Pantelay was in a very good temper.

"Perhaps we shall go.... If only he would be baptized! So many souls would be saved, for he rules the whole family."

"Oh, he is sure to be baptized. If we go there, he will be baptized out of sheer hospitality to us. Besides, we can take him presents. Here it's different, and nothing will come of it."

"That is true. In his native country a man is more inclined to listen to the voice of God, and a hard disposition is softened there more easily. For virtue is immanent in everyone's soul, but the way into the soul is often dark and crooked and difficult to find. People often need a pretext to bring them on to the highroad to good and salvation."

Father Pantelay talked at great length on the difficulties of such a task, and, as Józef was an attentive listener and did not argue with him, they soon became great friends. Meanwhile Stefan gradually made preparations for the journey by buying up the best dogs.

At length they started on their long missionary journey.

It seemed like a waking dream to the two friends when, surrounded by a crowd of inhabitants, they shouted to the dogs and were borne away at full speed along the track. Excitedly they looked back at the little town for the last time. The caravan consisted of three sledges, each with fifteen dogs. Buza drove in front with the provisions. Father Pantelay followed with his luggage and presents—tea, tobacco, and other valuables; Stefan and Józef came behind. Józef had no idea how to manage the dogs, and was of no use whatever on the journey. Father Pantelay kept looking round at them and smiling in a friendly way. He was glad that he had taken them with him, for he was setting out for an unknown country, and although God is everywhere, and always has us under His protection, yet it is pleasant to be surrounded by courageous and friendly people with whom a refreshing and instructive conversation is possible.

"I have never been farther in this direction than the edge of the tundra; the Spirit of God alone hovers over the waste beyond. Buza has been there; he has travelled to the world's end. Hey, Buza! what is it like farther on? Shall we be able to drink tea soon?"

"Where we stop we shall drink tea," the Cossack answered gravely.

He was immensely impressed by his own dignity as head of the expedition. He sat on the cask of vodka as if it were a throne, watching over it with a jealous eye.

"When we have passed the edge of the forest there will be no more houses or people to be seen. After that vodka will be all-powerful, and will have to answer every purpose; even our lives depend on it. Those cursed Chukchee drink it like fishes, and are wild to get it. When they've had a little, they are ready to give up everything for it; you've only to ask, and you can get anything from them. Yet we shall have nothing with us when we come back, for we shall have eaten our provisions and given away the presents. The sledges will be empty, and there won't be any means of reloading them; and as the dogs will have grown fat through resting and eating reindeer paunch at Otowaka's, there'll be no holding them, and we shall tear back. Ha, ha! Hey!" He alternately reflected, shouted, or sang a local song in a thin voice:

"O Sidorek, O Sidorek,
The light breath of warm breezes
Blows over land and sea!
Now go and fetch your sleigh;
Harness the dogs without delay.
Out to the rocks let them swiftly take you,
Out to the rocks by the shore of the sea,
O Sidorek, O Sidorek!"

"Buza, Buza, curb your frivolity!" Father Pantelay admonished him from a distance, as, in the silence of that frozen waste, his voice reached the other travellers through the clear, cold air.

The March sun made the snowdrifts appear so bright and smooth that by contrast the smallest bush seemed like a wood, and the slightest unevenness a hill. Soon, however, the summits of distant mountains showed on the horizon, with their white line sharply defined against the blue sky. The travellers turned towards these, and spent the night in a lonely fishing hut, the last human habitation, on the very outskirts of the dwindling forest. Henceforward they had only snow, rocks, and sky round them; the only trees to be seen were those washed down by the sea or by river floods, and the only people those in Otowaka's encampment.

The strong, well-fed dogs went at a brisk pace. After a day's journey the travellers unexpectedly found themselves at the brink of a steep chasm. Below it a snowy expanse showed as far as the eye could reach.

"The sea!" Buza cried.

They had guessed in time, and stopped the dogs.

"Do you see those specks shining in the distance, as if they were bits of sun? Those are ice-packs. But farther away—under that cloud on the horizon—is the open sea which never freezes. They say there is land beyond it; but no one has ever been there, for whoever goes doesn't come back."

For a while they stood entranced by the extent of the view and by the sun, which threw delicate blue shadows on the long, still, frozen waves. At last Buza reminded them that they must descend the cliffs and drive along the shore. They passed dark chasms all day long, for the sea had formed a bay here, and the whole shore was equally steep and defended by rocks.

"The waves beat up to the very top here; they are all 'bulls,'" Buza said, using a Russian expression for the cliffs.

There is indeed something defiant and bull-like in these last natural land defences, lifting their rocky crests to the sky.

The men spent the night under some tree trunks which had been washed down there by a stream.

"Do you know," Józef said to Stefan, as they lay down to sleep, "I have a superstitious fear that something will stop us, and it grows with every verst we pass."

Stefan was far too tired to analyze subtle emotions.

The weather continued favourable. It was only on the third day that a light, dry land breeze from the south began to blow the powdery snow from the clefts in the rocks on to their heads. The cold did not trouble them much, however, for the wall of cliffs protected them from the full blast of the wind. All the same, the Cossack shook his head and hurried on the dogs.

"It's not far now, but we must make haste. There are two promontories not far off, jutting out like stone bulls; they are called Pawal and Peweka. We shall have to cut through to the sea between them. Wet or fine, it's always windy there."

They arrived at the foot of Pawal towards the afternoon. The giant rock rose to a great height and ran out a long way into the sea. On both sides the land fell back from it abruptly, as if in fear. On the farther side of the narrow strait appeared a similar dark mass, though its size was lessened by the distance.

"You can see the encampment from here; it is on Peweka, in a hollow between two crags. Yet it's strange that I don't see any smoke. Perhaps the wind has blown it away. How it does blow! We shall have a bad time."

"Shall we spend the night here?"

"Spend the night—where there isn't a tree? Besides, who would spend the night here when he can see tents? The natives would lose all their respect for us. Let's go on! It may blow worse to-morrow. We will just feed the dogs, and then be off."

They unpacked the provisions and began to feed the dogs, taking some refreshment themselves. The wind made wild music among the rocks. When at times a more violent blast reached this sheltered place, their hands instantly became numb.

"We shall be frozen in another moment!"

"Please God, we shan't freeze, only we mustn't stop on the way or let go of the sledges for a moment; and we must tie everything to them, for whatever falls off will be lost. Keep close one behind the other, so as not to have to shout, for it's no use; and be very careful not to scatter snow over one another's sledge. Don't allow the dogs to turn with the wind, but keep them against it sideways; and remember, Father—and you too, sir—to have them well in hand. God preserve you from going near Peweka, for it's open sea there, and the gale will carry you away to your death. Don't stop by the way, for you will get no rest by stopping. In the Name of the Father and the Son!"

They rushed out impetuously from their sheltered nook. The gale caught them at once, blowing about the dogs' hair and tilting the sledges upwards. The men bent down to meet it, and turned their faces away, but they felt it cutting through them more and more. It beat against them with increasing force, piercing them through until there was no warmth left in their bodies, nothing but a smarting sensation from the snow which completely covered them. Their mouths and their clothes were soon full of these parching flakes; they felt them penetrating their furs to their very skin and melting there, making them shudder all over. Streams of this powdery snow ran above the smooth, shining surface of the ground, coiling with a hiss like an adder round their feet and bodies, catching the dogs' drooping heads, striking the runners of the sledges, and rolling back in grey balls which increased as they wound in and out of the caravan.

The men crouched in contorted attitudes, seeking to screen themselves from the biting cold. Their chins almost rested on their knees, and they only glanced ahead now and then to where the rock, which was to be their refuge, was darkening in the distance. The dogs also understood where their safety lay; they used their light shaggy paws to the best of their power, and plunged resolutely into the raging wind driving towards the sea. They constantly fell down, for they slipped on the hard surface; their eyes were bloodshot and starting from the sockets, the breast collar choked them, the sledge had suddenly become a great weight on them. The poor animals ran stooping low, and not even daring to open their mouths to take breath, for the cold wind hurt their throat and lungs. The rattle of the sledges, the dogs' whining, the men's curses, were like atoms in the furious, hollow roar of the storm, and fell into space, as though no one were calling, suffering, or struggling. Stefan never took his eyes off the distance, mentally measuring it all the while; he realized despairingly that his dogs were growing tired and would cease to follow the leader, and that he must stand up to drive them on and turn them back into the track. Józef clung helplessly to the sledge, shivering as in fever. At last, when they were nearly under the huge crag of Peweka, the wind abated and merely blew in gusts. Stefan looked up with a feeling of almost religious awe at this rock which weathered gales and sea. Buza was waiting for them there.

"Well, we have done more than we could expect! We may congratulate ourselves. Now it will be just as if we were at home. I am only surprised not to see anyone about. It's true the weather's bad. But they ought to have seen us. Perhaps they have been killing reindeer or catching seals, and have eaten too much and are asleep. We must go up the mountain. Hi, Shaggy-hair! Noch! Noch!"

The dogs, being hungry and in a bad temper, began to bite one another. By the time they had been quieted and the harness set to rights, the sun had hidden behind the high hills and the red glow of evening was spreading over rocks and snow.

They reached the pass by a narrow and difficult way.

Then Buza, who was going on ahead, suddenly pulled up at a turn of the path, thunderstruck; his dogs immediately lay down. The men rushed up to him, but he neither answered their questions nor took his eyes off something lying hidden under a rock. Empty tents, with the flaps unfastened in a hospitable manner, stood before them in a strange silence. But the Cossack's eyes were fixed on something else.

A Chukchee, dressed in fur and with a spear in his hand, lay face downwards across the pathway. A little farther on a head showed from under a snowdrift, the whites of the eyes shining and the hair dishevelled by the gale; a hand like a claw, clotted with blood, protruded from lower down the drift. Streaks of blood mingled with the red evening glow.

"What does it mean? What is this?"

"Hush! For the love of God, be quiet! Let us escape!" the Cossack exclaimed, looking in consternation at the dogs, which suddenly sat up and began to howl. "Let us escape!" he repeated, turning away.

But Stefan and the priest objected.

"We must see if there is anyone left alive. Perhaps we can help them."

"No, I shan't go; I'm afraid. You can go yourselves. I'll lead the dogs down to the valley. God!... God! Thy will be done!"

Stefan took a revolver from the holster and went into the dark interior of a tent. He saw a cold hearth, sprinkled with snow, and, hanging above it, a cauldron with meat which had frozen. Having lighted a match, he perceived a Chukchee lying naked to the waist, with a terrible wound in his chest. "Is there anyone here?" he asked in a trembling voice, not daring to enter the inner tent by the low hanging.

Instead of an answer, he only heard the tent skins rubbing together as the wind tore at them, and the missionary's prayers. He therefore bent down and crawled under the hanging; but he instantly drew back. The whole inner tent seemed to be full of contorted human bodies. He mastered himself, however, took the tallow candle from the priest, and crept in. Here he found the naked bodies of murdered women and children. It must all have happened quite recently, for the blood was still red, the bodies had the look of marble, and the cuts were still wide open; but they were all stark and cold as stone. The frost had finished what the knife had left undone.

One of the young women had evidently tried to escape. She had torn the outer tent covering and endeavoured to jump out, but had been caught at the entrance; the child, over whom she was bending with an imploring gesture, must have hampered her movements, and she had been run through the back and nailed to the ground with her baby. Stefan looked at her face and recognized his recent guest, Impynena, the wife of Aimurgin.

"This is frightful! Let us escape!" they all exclaimed with one accord, filled with fear and horror.

"Women and children too! There is not a living soul left!"

"Who is it? What can——?"

"Oh, don't ask!" Buza said, shaking his head. "I will tell you afterwards; let's go now!"

"At once—in a wind like this and at night?"

"What's to be done? At least it gives us a chance."

They hastily descended. Buza kept his eyes fixed straight in front of him, and dropped them when obliged to turn his head in the direction from which he came. They halted under the rock for a moment, in order to feed the dogs.

"Be sure to keep the wind on your left—always on your left—then wherever you go you will find land. There—round the coast by Pawal—is the easiest. We shall meet there, if only we can hold out till morning. But don't leave the sledge, or the storm will carry you and it away. And don't look behind you—Heaven defend it! For 'They' don't like it, and will come after you," he added significantly.

Once more they plunged into the blizzard. Once more the snow encircled their feet like hissing adders, the smarting sensation began again, and they drew their breath with difficulty. To complete the misfortune, twilight set in with the gale. The evening glow rested lower and lower on the rocks, while dark clouds rose steadily from the "open sea," where the country lies whence "no one has ever come back." The tired dogs went unwillingly. Stefan was continually obliged to jump up and urge them on with his heavy ice-spear. When the evening glow had disappeared and the stars shone out, the gale, which seemed to have been only waiting for the signal, rose with such violence that, heedless of everything, the poor animals turned and ran before it. For a long way Stefan ploughed the snow with the sharp ice-spear, leaning his full weight against it, and hanging to the sledge, which rushed along, rocking and bumping. At last, when they lighted on softer ground, he succeeded in stopping it. The dogs lay down at once. Without letting the reins go out of his hand, he stood up and looked round. Before him rose a white, jagged ice-wall, and the light of the stars showed the clouds from the "open sea" hanging over it. The coast had disappeared somewhere, and on all sides the country was white and flat.

"We have come a long way!... Józef, are you cold? How you are shivering! Get up; can you eat something?"

"I am cold. Is it still far?"

"I don't know; the wind carried us away. Can you get up?"

Józef was silent and did not stir.

Stefan shook the snow off him, turned the sledge and put the dogs in readiness, rousing them by his voice and by blows of the ice-spear. He skilfully did all this crawling on his knees, for when he stood up the wind blew him over. At last the dogs got up and limped on. He remembered that he ought to keep the wind on his left, but the shore along which he had been driving was nowhere to be seen. There was nothing but the white plain, the fury of the gale, and the stars in the sky. This wind seemed at times like some powerful winnowing-fan, violently driving them into the sea. When it struck the bed of the sledge, it lifted it up like a sheet of paper, and whatever it tore from it instantly disappeared. First they lost their bag of biscuits, then the cushions; finally Józef fell out and the storm carried him off like a bag of down. Stefan was horror-struck as he watched him helplessly waving his arms and trying in vain to stand upright. Shouting despairingly, he turned the dogs in pursuit of his companion. They rushed madly after the object rolling before them, and, fearing that they would tear him to pieces if they caught him up, Stefan cried:

"Face the wind! Flat against the ground!"

The wind carried his words, and Józef evidently heard them, for he began to twist round until he gained a foothold in the snow. Stefan instantly struck the ice-spear into the ice with his full strength, so that the sledge shook.

"Crawl! I can't leave the dogs!" he called to Józef.

The latter answered something and tried to get up, but the wind blew him over. In the end he managed to turn and face it.

"Crawl—crawl!" His companion's voice was borne to him in a whisper in the blasts of the snowstorm.

"Leave me—never mind me—I can't——" he answered, but almost before they had left his lips the gale blew his words in the opposite direction.

Finally, by a great effort, he began to crawl. All this took some time, and meanwhile a rumbling sound deeper than the storm was added to the roar of the wind. This came from the pack ice in the direction of the clouds hanging over the "open sea." Stefan heard it, but did not realize what it was until the ice was struck with a crash like thunder.

"The sea!" he cried.

Józef was now near the sledge.

"Make haste!" he exclaimed, helping him into the sledge and strapping him to it. "Do you hear? That's the sea! The storm is breaking up the ice behind us."

They plodded on once more. Stefan walked nearly all the time, pushing the sledge, but tied to it by the waist for safety. He forgot that he was cold or that his limbs might become frostbitten. The dogs exerted all their strength, scenting the danger. Every minute the roar came nearer; it sounded like a cannonade above the noise of the wind. Driven by despair, they fled ever faster. Yet at last the ice rocked under them, and in imagination they saw the water bubbling under their feet. It was close behind them; but the ice on which they were driving was still dry.

"Throw out everything—clothes as well as food! Throw them all out of the sledge!" Stefan shouted, scarcely able to keep pace with the terrified dogs. Bags, implements of all kinds, and furs flew away into the darkness. The lightened sledge sped forward rapidly, and Stefan was only just in time to throw himself on to it beside Józef; the dogs needed no rein or guiding.

"You will die through my fault, Stefan; forgive me," Józef said. "When I think of that, I want to jump out of the sledge and go back into the storm; but I expect you would not let me, would you?"

"What's the use of talking nonsense! We shall die together as we have lived together. A year sooner or later...! But we shall be buried in graves—never fear, we shall get back all right! Besides, the wind is going down. Can that be the coast?" he exclaimed, as he looked up.

Close above them rose a dark belt of rocks. Quickly they climbed up on to this firm ground, and while sheltering there, half dead with exhaustion, they watched the white ice-floes below packing with a loud roar. Stefan went to look for wood, and found a tree trunk not far away, from which he broke off a few splinters and lighted a small fire. The wind soon changed this into a bonfire, and for the rest of the night they slept beside it.

Buza found them there at daybreak.

"Are you alive? Thank God! It's a good thing that I didn't allow you to take anything away with you from there, or we should never have come off safe and sound. For this is just their 'bad weather.' It's the crime that made it bad. We didn't even make a fire, for I am afraid of the Chukchee. Didn't you light one? We saw a fire in this direction."

"We lighted one, for we haven't any of our things left, and nothing to eat. We should have been frozen."

They related how they had lost everything, and how the sea had chased them.

"Ah! that was not the sea—it wasn't the sea!" Buza sighed. "If only we get home safely...."

Sadly they returned along the cliffs. They were obliged to make a wide circle, for the wind had blown them far beyond Pawal. They were unable to light fires, and drove on without resting as long as the dogs' strength held out. Buza continually cast anxious looks about him.

Suddenly the dogs growled fiercely, and ran so fast towards the rocks that Buza was scarcely able to hold them.

"It only needed this!" he cried with pale lips. "A rock-spirit!"

A dark brown, unmoving face looked through a crevice in the rock.

"Make the sign of the Cross over him, Father!"

With trembling hands the missionary made the sign of the Cross; but the head did not disappear. Stefan held in his dogs, which were straining at their harness. He looked fixedly at the head.

"Otowaka! is that you?" he cried at last, when an old Chukchee, thin and pale, came out, leading a little boy by the hand.

"It is I ... Otowaka ... Kituwia...." he said; but his lips were too parched to continue, and he merely waved his hand towards the distant Peweka. "The Great Spirit would not allow my family to perish without an avenger. I will go with you and be baptized, and bring him up."

He laid his hand on the head of the boy, whose face suddenly took a disdainful expression, reminding Stefan strikingly of Kituwia's stony face.

THE RETURNING WAVE

By BOLESŁAW PRUS (ALEXSANDER GŁOWACKI)

Chapter I

If Pastor Boehme's worthiness could have been weighed on a pair of scales, the reverend gentleman would have been obliged to travel on a goods truck. But as worthiness cannot be classified under any of the three mathematical dimensions, but comes under the fourth, which does not belong to the world of realities, he travelled in a little one-horse britzka instead.

To the fat, well-groomed pony, the flies, the heavy collar, the sultry day, and the dusty road were of much greater interest than the virtues of his master, or even his whip. His master took the whip with him only for fear of being laughed at, for he never used it. In fact, he would have been unable to use it; for when he exhibited his worthy personality, with its short whiskers, panama hat, and white and pink percoline coat, on the roads, he had to hold the reins firmly in one hand to prevent the old pony from stumbling, and with the other he poured out continual and benevolent, but ineffectual blessings on all passers-by. For they all took off their caps to him; regardless of religious differences they liked the "worthy German."

On this particular July afternoon the reverend gentleman was on his way to perform one of his minor spiritual duties, namely that of first grieving his neighbour and then comforting him. In short, he was going to see his friend Gottlieb Adler, to inform him that his son, Ferdinand, had run into debt abroad, and subsequently to exhort the father to forgive his prodigal son.

Gottlieb Adler was the owner of a cotton-mill. The road along which the pastor was driving connected the mill with the railway-station; it was a well-kept road, though it had not been planted with trees. A little country town lay on the left, and the factory on the right, at some distance. The black and red roofs of the workmen's cottages peeped from the sheltering plane-trees, limes and poplars; behind them lay a large four-storied building in the shape of a horseshoe. This was the factory. A thicker clump of trees close by indicated Adler's garden; it surrounded an elegant villa with some farm buildings attached. The sun was flooding everything with golden light. The tall red-brick chimney sent out thick, curling smoke, and had the wind been in his direction the pastor would have heard the busy roar of the engines and the noise of the power-looms. But as it was, nothing disturbed the peaceful silence except the whistle of a distant train and the rattling of his own cart. A quail diving into the corn was singing its little song.

The constant attention needed to prevent the fat pony from stumbling at last wore out the pastor; so trusting to the mercy of Him who delivered Daniel from the lions' den and Jonah from the whale's belly, he tied the reins to the back of the seat, and folded his hands as in prayer. Boehme loved to dream, and a gentle doze helped to open memory's enchanted gates. He now recalled (probably for the hundredth time that year and at the same spot) another factory, somewhere in the plains of Brandenburg, where he and his friend Gottlieb Adler had spent their childhood. They were sons of fairly well-to-do master-weavers, were born in the same year, and went to the same elementary school. A quarter of a century passed after they left it before they met again. Boehme had finished his theological studies at the University of Tübingen, and Adler had amassed some twenty thousand thalers.

On Polish soil, far away from their Fatherland, they met again. Boehme had been appointed pastor of a Protestant parish, and Adler had set up a little cotton-mill. Another quarter of a century had now passed, during which they had never been separated; they visited each other several times every week. Adler's little mill had grown into a huge factory which at the moment employed some six hundred workmen, and brought him in a clear profit of several thousand roubles a year. Boehme had remained poor except for the profit of several thousand blessings yearly.

The two friends also differed in other respects. The pastor had a son who was now finishing his studies at the technical college at Riga, and who looked forward to supporting himself, his parents and his sister for the rest of their lives. Adler's only son had never even completed his school course; he was now travelling abroad, and his only concern was to get as much as he could for himself out of his father's money. While the pastor was fairly satisfied with his several thousand blessings a year, and only wondered sometimes whether his daughter, aged eighteen, would marry well, Adler was ever impatient for his banking account to reach the desired sum of a million roubles as quickly as possible, and he often worried himself with thoughts as to what would ultimately become of his son.

At the present moment Boehme was quite content to look at the cornfields around him and the sky above—scattered with white and grey clouds—and to recall the memories of childhood; a similar factory in the shape of a horseshoe, the same kind of trees, and the same villa with a pond in the garden.... What a pity there was no village school here, no almshouses, no hospital! Adler had forgotten to build these, although he had copied the shape of the Brandenburg factory. "Had there not been a school there," the pastor reflected, "Adler would never have been a millionaire, nor I a pastor."

The britzka was now approaching the factory, and the noise became audible and roused the musing pastor. A group of dirty children in ragged dresses or only in shirts were playing in the road. Vans with cotton goods became visible behind the wall which surrounded the yard, and Adler's villa appeared to the left in all its elegance. The pastor could now distinctly see the summer-house in the garden, near the pond, where he and his friend usually sat drinking their hock and talking of old times and current news.

Here and there the washing was hanging out of the windows of the workmen's cottages. The inhabitants were nearly all at work at the mill; only a few pale, hollow-cheeked women greeted the pastor with the words:

"May the Lord be praised!"

"For ever and ever!" he answered, raising his battered old panama hat.

Meanwhile the britzka had turned to the left, for the pony, needing no further guiding, trotted into the courtyard of the villa residence. A groom came out at once, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and helped the pastor out.

"Is your master at home?"

"He is at the factory; I'll run and tell him you are here, sir."

The pastor entered the portico. Having divested himself of his coat, the reverend gentleman now revealed himself in a long frock-coat which made his short legs look still shorter, while the long nose adorning his faded face seemed to grow in proportion. The pastor folded his hands and waited, reminding himself of the object of his visit, and rehearsing a well-thought-out address, which was to be divided into three parts according to the laws of rhetoric. The introductory part dealt with the unfathomable ways of Providence which lead human beings along thorny paths to eternal joy; the second part dwelt on the story of young Ferdinand Adler, who was unable to return to the paternal home until his creditors had been satisfied.... This was likely to produce an outburst of wrath on the part of the father, and a long list of Ferdinand's misdoings. But when the angry cotton-spinner would be on the point of disinheriting his son, there would follow the third part of the pastor's address, which would include a reconciliation. Boehme intended to allude to the story of the Prodigal Son, to touch lightly on the fact that his friend was himself responsible for Ferdinand's bad upbringing, and that in expiation of this sin he should offer the sum demanded by the creditors as a sacrifice.

While the pastor was rehearsing his plan of action, Adler appeared. He was huge and of clumsy build, already slightly bent; with large feet, a big round nose, and thick lips like those of a negro. He had thin fair whiskers and no moustache, and was dressed in a long grey frock-coat of an unfashionable cut, and trousers to match. When he took off his hat in order to mop the perspiration off his forehead, he showed tow-coloured, closely cropped hair, and projecting light blue eyes without eyebrows.

The millionaire walked with a heavy tread like a trooper; his big arms stood out from his body like the ribs of some antediluvian animal. His broad chest heaved and fell like a pair of smith's bellows as he greeted the pastor from a distance with phlegmatic nods and loud guffaws; but he did not smile. Indeed, it would have been difficult to imagine what a smile would look like on this fleshy, apathetic face which Nature had fashioned so roughly. Yet it was not repulsive, merely rather strange; it did not inspire fear, only the feeling that opposition to those clumsy hands would be useless. Obviously it was impossible to get at the heart of this battering-ram in human form, but, if injured, the whole fabric would collapse like a building the foundations of which had crumbled away.

"How are you, Martin?" Adler called from the lowest step of the staircase. Shaking the pastor's hand firmly, he went on: "Ah, of course, you were in Warsaw yesterday.... Have you heard anything of my boy? The rascal writes so rarely.... Probably the only person who knows his whereabouts is the banker."

As they stood together in the portico, the little pastor looked, beside his friend, like "a locust beside a camel."

"Well, tell me," Adler continued, sitting down on a little cast-iron seat; its metallic sound as it creaked under his weight harmonized strangely with the thundering roar of the factory. "Has Ferdinand not written to the bank?"

Boehme found himself plunged unwillingly into the middle of his business. Sitting down on the seat facing Adler, he remembered with marvellous presence of mind the opening part of his speech—namely the unfathomable ways of Providence.

The pastor had one drawback; this was that he could not speak fluently without his glasses, which he was in the habit of mislaying. He felt that he ought now to begin the introduction; but how was he to begin without his glasses? He cleared his throat and fidgeted, turned out his pockets and found nothing. Where could he have left his spectacles? He quite forgot his opening sentences.

Adler, who knew his friend by heart, began to feel uneasy.

"Why are you fidgeting like that?" he asked.

"I am sorry—it is very annoying—I have left my spectacles behind."

"What do you want your spectacles for? You are not going to preach a sermon, are you?"

"No, but you see——"

"I am asking about Ferdinand—any news of him?"

"I will tell you presently," Boehme said, grimacing. Again he put his hand into his breast pocket, and took out a letter and a large purse, but no spectacles.

"I wonder if I left them in the britzka," he said, turning towards the steps.

Adler, who knew that the pastor carried only important documents in his breast pocket, snatched the letter from his hand.

"My dear Gottlieb," Boehme said, confused; "give me back the letter; I will read it to you myself, but I must first find my glasses."

He ran out into the courtyard, but returned in dismay a few minutes later, not having found them.

Adler was reading the letter with great interest; the veins stood out on his forehead, and his eyes seemed to project more than ever.

When he had finished he spat on the floor.

"What a scoundrel, this Ferdinand!..." he burst out. "In two years' time he is fifty-eight thousand and thirty-one roubles in debt, though I gave him a yearly allowance of ten thousand roubles."

"Ah, I know!" suddenly exclaimed the pastor, and ran off. "I couldn't have left them anywhere but in the pocket of my overcoat."

He returned triumphantly.

"You are always mislaying your spectacles and finding them again," grumbled Adler, leaning his head on his hand. He looked thoughtful and sad.

"Fifty-eight and twenty—that's seventy-eight thousand and thirty-one roubles in two years. How shall I be able to make that up? By Heaven, I don't know."

Meanwhile the pastor had put on his spectacles and regained his usual presence of mind. Though the introduction and the second part of his speech had been lost, there was still the third part left. Boehme was always resourceful in a difficulty, so he cleared his throat, and began:

"Although, dear Gottlieb, your feelings as a father may be deeply wounded, and you may sometimes justly complain——"

Adler roused himself from his reverie, and replied calmly:

"It's more than mere complaining; I have to pay. Johann!" he suddenly shouted, with a voice that shook the roof of the portico.

The footman appeared.

"A glass of water!"

He emptied two glasses, and then said without a shade of excitement: "I must telegraph to Rothschilds' to-night. I will send that rascal a wire too; he must come back; he has had enough travelling."

Boehme realized that not only the chance of the third part of his speech was gone, but that Adler was treating his son far too indulgently. To incur debts of nearly sixty thousand roubles was not only a financial loss, but an abuse of parental confidence, and therefore no light offence. Who knows? If it had not been for this money, Adler might have been persuaded to found a school for the children, without which they were growing up idle and wild. Instead of standing up for the frivolous son, the pastor would now become his censor, which was all the easier for him as he had known him from his childhood. Moreover, he had now recovered his spectacles and his balance of mind.

Adler was leaning back with his hands clasped behind his head, looking at the ceiling. Boehme put his hand on his knee and began:

"My dear Gottlieb, your Christian submission in misfortune sets an excellent example; but as we are very imperfect in the sight of God, it is our duty not only to be resigned, but to be active. Our Lord not only sacrificed Himself, but taught and improved men. Ferdinand is your son in the flesh, and mine in the spirit. In spite of his gifts and good qualities, he does not carry out the injunctions to work which were laid upon man when he was driven from Paradise."

"Johann!" shouted Adler.

The footman instantly appeared.

"The engine is going too fast; tell them to slacken down! It's always like that when I am out of the way."

The footman disappeared, and the pastor continued, undismayed:

"Your son does not work, but wastes the powers of body and mind given him by the Creator. I have told you my principles on this point many times, and in educating my son Józef I have endeavoured to be faithful to them."

Adler shook his head gloomily.